


Six Times (I Loved Him)

by ARollingStone, HarveyDangerfield



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bottom Ford, Child Abuse, Consensual Underage Sex, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Time, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Sibling Incest, Top Stan, Underage Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 14:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17982947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ARollingStone/pseuds/ARollingStone, https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyDangerfield/pseuds/HarveyDangerfield
Summary: The six most significant kisses in Stan and Ford's life, in chronological order





	1. First Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> yeah this fic has the boys exploring their sexuality before they're 18, you know like normal human people do. don't get weird. there's comment moderation on this fic so if you don't like the themes contained herein just tab out of it, you'll just be flushing your hate down the toilet if you try. 
> 
> anyway this is a very wholesome fic for about half and then the other half is extremely painful, so enjoy! written with my spouse (grvnklestan on tumblr)

It started, as many things do, innocently enough.

 

Just ten years old, and already Ford has to listen to his brother bragging about kissing Lily-Anne Petersworth at The Kissing Spot behind the school. Everyone knows about The Kissing Spot, it’s a little alcove between the gymnasium and the assembly hall, where the bushes have grown wild on both ends and there aren’t any windows. They used to store the dumpsters there before they moved them to be closer to the cafeteria for convenience, so now there’s just a little enclosed courtyard, perfect for amorous couples to sneak into through the gap in the bushes and make out or worse. Ford’s heard that people have found __condoms__  in there.

 

Sitting on the top bunk, Ford does his best to focus on his arithmetic homework, but Stan is __still going,__  lying on his back in the middle of the room with his paddleball.

 

"I can't believe it! Lily-Anne Petersworth kissed ME!" Stanley's paddling so fast that that ball on the string is a blur, and he himself is grinning ear to ear. "I guess she heard that when I kissed Gina Szekeley I literally blew her socks off! Who wouldn't wanna a kiss from me!"

 

“Stanley, __please__ ,” Ford groans, rubbing his hands up under his big glasses. “Give it a rest, would you? You’ve been talking about this for almost an hour now, I don’t wanna hear about it anymore, you’re being weird.”

 

"What's weird about it?" Stanley rolls up on his elbows and plunks the ball against the paddle a couple more times before looking up at his brother. When he tilts his head to the side, curly brown hair falls into his face. "Like you wouldn't be excited if somebody kissed you."

 

“I wouldn’t know,” Ford says defensively, hunched over his homework. “I’m tryin’ to do my homework so you can copy off it, so if you don’t mind…?”

 

"Whaddaya mean ya wouldn't know?" Stanley sits up then, lotus style, tossing the paddle and ball away. "Wait a second--are you sayin' you've never been kissed before?! SIXER! WHAT?!"

 

Ford feels his ears warm up and he shrinks in on himself. “Shh, not so loud!” he squeaks, waving his hands at his brother. “Ma’s still workin’ on the phone, quit shouting! So what if I’ve never been kissed? Aren’t we a little __young__ to be kissing already? Ma said she didn’t even have her first kiss until she married dad.”

 

Scrambling up from his place on the floor, Stan smacks his whole face into the ladder on his way up to Ford's bunk, a trickle of blood appearing from a small cut on his nose which had recently scabbed over, but he doesn't seem to mind. He just hops up into the bunk and scoots up next to his brother, looking over the books scattered around before he grabs his brother by the shoulder.

 

"C'mon, you never wondered what it's like? I've kissed plenty of times, and it was GREAT every time." He grins. "What if I set ya up with somebody?"

 

“Set me up?” The flush spreads from his ears to his cheeks. “With who? Everyone at school just thinks I’m a freak, no girls would wanna kiss me anyway. Besides, I don’t need to kiss anyone, it’s… it’s okay. It’s not bad, it’s not like I can miss it if I never had it, right?”

 

Stan loops his arm over Ford's shoulder, and pats him on the chest, "Don't worry buddy, I'm gonna set you up, and you're gonna have your first kiss--and it'll be GREAT!"

 

“But with who?” Ford flushes at the proximity of his brother, glancing away. His breath smells like bubble gum, and his arm is so warm. He tries to scatter the thoughts by shaking his head. “Uhh… what about Melinda Beckham? She sits at my table in algebra… she’s really nice and she touches my hand sometimes if I pass her pencils.”

 

"Melinda Beckham? Puh- _ _lease__. Consider it done, Bro." Unaware of his brother's plight, Stanley continues to hold him, his arm draped so casually across Ford's shoulders, hand pressed against his skinny chest. "I bet she's dyin' to kiss you, or she WILL be when I get done talkin' you up."

 

Ford ducks his head down and away, smiling to himself-- and it isn’t from the idea of kissing Melinda, which is something he’ll have to… really unpack later. “Okay, okay,” he jabs an elbow into Stan’s ribs, giggling and trying to push him away while Stan makes kissy noises in his ear. “Would you lemme finish our homework now, you big dope?”

 

"Yeah yeah, okay. But just remember what I said--it's gonna be great!" Climbing back down the ladder, Stanley sits on the floor in the middle of their room and returns to his paddle ball, quietly thinking to himself and making plans for Ford's big kiss.

 

Luckily, it isn’t hard for Stanley to get Melinda alone. Fate may favor the wise and cautious, but Stanley has never been a boy who messed around with things like patience, so he just corners her at her locker between classes the next day, and leans against them beside her, bouncing his eyebrows. She rolls her eyes and loops her backpack over her shoulder, tugging her braid out so it lays across her chest. “Ugh, what do you want, Pines?”

 

"Hey-ey Melinda! It's Melinda, right?" Stan shoots her fingerguns. "You free after school today, 'cuz you might find somethin' interesting in the Kissin' Spot if you are."

 

Despite her prickliness when he first approached, she cocks a hip out and tugs her braid in one hand, twisting it around her fingers while she fiddles with her backpack strap with the other. “I might be free after school…” she says.

 

"I bet ya are, Melinda B." Stanley winks at her and waggles his brows. "After school. Kissin' Spot? Don't leave me hangin'."

 

“Okay, I’ll be there,” she smiles, and reaches out to shove him by the shoulder. “Now get outta my way, I’m gonna be late to class.”   
  
She jogs away, braid and skirt bouncing, and Ford appears from around the corner, peeking from the boy’s bathroom. “Did you do it? Did she say she’ll be there?” he hisses quietly.

 

"Oh yeah, she's gonna be there, buddy, don't you worry." Stan drags him in for a noogie. "You just wait, you're gonna get your kiss."

 

Stanley goes home on the regular bus that day while Ford stays behind to wait for the late bus, feeling very proud of himself. When his mom asks him how he day was, he calls himself Casanova which gets a hearty laugh out of her, and she gives him an extra big slice of pie. It’s nice sometimes when he gets to be home alone, it doesn’t happen all that often but spending time alone with his mom is rare and really nice. She ruffles his hair and calls him her special man, and he feels on top of the world.

 

But it all comes crashing down at 3:30 when the front door opens. He hears Ford kick off his shoes by the front door at the top of the stairs, and throw his backpack on the bench there, but instead of coming into the living room to tell Stan all about the great kiss he had, he just runs through the kitchen, through the living room, and right into the bedroom, slamming the door so loud that the signs on it rattle against the wood.

 

“Hey! No slammin’ doors!” their mother shouts from her office.

 

"I uh . . . gotta go, Ma." Stan says hastily, jumping up from where he'd been watching TV upside down on the couch and rushes off toward their room. Thankfully, Ford hadn't locked it, but when he opens it, he finds his brother lying face down on the top bunk with his head buried in a pillow.

 

"How'd it go . . ." Stanley asks, gulping audibly, shutting the door with a tender motion behind him, then climbs the ladder to his brother's bed.

 

“Leave me alone!” he hears Ford’s muffled words as he rolls over away from Stan, taking the pillow with him to keep hiding. He curls up tiny, he still has his coat on he’d been in such a hurry to come hide.

 

"What happened, Sixer?" Stan kneels at the foot of the bed, crouched over with concern. "Did Melinda stand ya up?"

 

“No,” Ford throws his glasses behind him, hugging the pillow to his chest. “Just leave me alone.”

 

“Stanford…” Stan crawls a little higher up the bed, an ache settling in his chest.

 

“Leave me alone!” Ford sits up, his face red and shiny with tears as he looks at Stan with blurry eyes. He picks up the pillow and throws it at Stan at full force, whipping him in the head with it. “This is all your fault! If you just left me alone in the first place!”

 

He flops back over, curling up tiny again and hiding his face in his arms, his shoulder shaking.Stan tucks the pillow between his arms and bites his lip, shoulders hunching. He feels suddenly very guilty, though he isn't sure for what just yet. It's clear his brother is upset, however.

 

"What happened? Wouldja just tell me?" Ford mumbles something too quietly to be heard, so he crawls over and lays down on his side beside Ford. “What was that, poindexter?”

 

“I said she thought it was you,” Ford says, lifting his head just enough so that Stan can hear him.

 

Stanley's face goes as red as his brother's and he shakes his head quickly, as if he's trying to clear cotton from his ears, "No! What? Why did she think that?! I musta--oh jeeze . . ." Swiping fingers through his unruly hair, Stan looks up at his brother, "I'm sorry Sixer, I must not have been clear enough."

 

“She thought __you__  were going there to kiss her,” Ford sobs into his arms, but at least Stan is close enough now to hear him. “When I showed up she screamed at me and she hit me with her backpack a bunch and then ran away. She called me a __freak__ , and told me to tell you to never go near her again neither. She’s never gonna even sit with me again!”

 

"Sixer I didn't--I'm sorry!" Tears prickle in Stan's eyes, just hearing his brother cry. "I didn't mean to! She said yes, I thought I was settin' you up!"

 

Ford sniffs when he hears his brother’s voice crack, and he looks up to see him turning red as well, tears filling his eyes. He sits up again and scrubs his own face before hugging his knees and glancing away. He doesn’t want to make Stan feel bad, not really. He’s upset, but it isn’t __really__  Stan’s fault. It’s a little Stan’s fault… but Ford doesn’t want him to feel bad enough to cry.

 

“It’s okay,” he sniffs, rubbing his nose over his coat sleeve. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway… even if she did wanna kiss me I would have just embarrassed myself. I don’t have the first idea of how to kiss. I don’t know how you got so good at it that you’re kissing girls all the time without making a big fool of yourself… did you know how to do it right from the start?”

 

"No . . . I practiced on my hand." Stan rubs his arm, his ears burning bright red and he glances away, unable to make eye contact with his brother while admitting such a thing. "I just did it until it felt nice."

 

He doesn't say anything for a minute, just sniffles and tries to pull himself back together, and then a slow grin tugs at Stanley's mouth and he looks back up at Ford, triumphant. "Hey! What if we practiced on each other?"

 

Ford feels those words hit him in the chest like a sledge hammer, knocking the breath right out of him. His head snaps up to look at Stan, his eyes wide as his cheeks darken, darken, darken with a flush, cycling through so many shades until his cheeks look like christmas hams. Had he really just heard that right? Did Stan just offer to __kiss__ him?

 

“What?” is all he manages to squeak out. Why is this making his heart pound so hard? Why does he feel like he wants to just die?

 

"C'mon, it's the perfect solution. We could practice kissin' with each other, so that when the time comes and we hafta kiss, we're real good at it." Stanley bounces excitedly on his knees, his heart's racing too, but he seems to be asking less questions about it than Ford, but isn't that always the case? "If you're worried about it bein' weird, it doesn't count 'cuz we're twins!"

 

“How does that make it __less__ weird?” Ford asks, his voice breathless. He feels dizzy, and he can feel his palms sweating. The idea of kissing Stan is making him feel… weird. Really weird. He can’t even tell if it’s bad weird, but… it’s weird. He imagines putting his hands on his shoulder and leaning in and putting his mouth-- okay, it’s definitely not bad weird.

 

Stan bites his lip, and rubs his arm again, "I dunno . . . look if ya don't wanna, we don't have to, I just thought it might be nice, yaknow? 'Cuz I'm not gonna stand ya up at the Kissin' Spot, and you're not gonna be weird about it if I don't-- nevermind. I guess it was kinda stupid, huh?"

 

His brother gives a breathless laugh and looks over at the ladder, looking very much like he's considering just climbing down and leaving, he's made a fool of himself, and no matter how much he really does want to kiss Ford, he doesn't want to make his brother do anything that he doesn't want to.

 

“Wait,” Ford reaches out in a hurry when Stan starts to crawl for the ladder, grabbing him by the shoulder. His heart is in his __mouth__  and he can barely hear his own words his blood is rushing so loudly in his ears, but he forces his mouth to cooperate anyway. “You… you really think it wouldn’t count? As my first kiss? Cause we’re twins, right? That… cancels out, doesn’t it? Like kissing your reflection in the mirror.”

 

Stan looks uncertain then, "Yeah . . . I guess so? It doesn't really count, right? I mean, it’s just like how you teach me at math and stuff… you teach me how to do the math, but I still do the math on my own. It’s like that, but with kissing.”

 

“You __don’t__  do the math, though,” Ford frowns.

 

“That ain’t the point!” Stan protests.

 

He stops where he is, and sits back down on his butt, Ford so close he can feel the warmth coming off his body, and suddenly, Stan's heart is in his throat.

 

"I mean . . . if ya wanna. We don't have to."

 

“Do… do __you__  wanna?” Ford asks, his breathing picking up a little bit. “You know more about kissing than I do, so… it’d be more like a lesson than both of us practicing. Do you even know how to be a teacher? What if I’m not a good student?”

 

" 'Course I wanna." Stan shoves at him playfully and giggles. "C'mon Sixer, you're always a good student--but yeah, I'd love to give ya kissin' lessons. My brother should learn from the best!"

 

“Shut up, you’re not the __best__ ,” a smile returns to Ford’s face as he shoves him back. The nerves come back a moment later as he locks eyes with Stan. He’s really about to do this? He’s going to kiss his own brother? The thought of it makes him tremble with… something. He’s afraid to call it excitement.

 

He scoots in, and crosses his legs so he’s sitting just inches away from Stan. “Okay… teach me.”

 

Stan reaches forward, his heart racing, and he touches Ford's chin in a sort of clumsy motion, his palms already sweaty, ears completely cherry red. He swallows the lump in his throat and crosses the distance between them before pressing his lips to Ford's in a tender, chaste kiss.

 

Looking back on it, this is the exact moment Ford’s entire world changed. His heart slams in his ribs so hard it hurts and his eyes burn with tears that don’t fall, tears that he wouldn’t understand the meaning of for years to come: relief. This is happening, this is real, he can feel his brother’s lips against his, and every dream he’s ever had, every though that’s ever plagued him are all in a single moment, vindicated.

 

When Stan pulls back, Ford looks at him through foggy, unclear eyes, not really seeing the details of Stan’s face with his glasses off, but somehow that makes it easier. He lets out a slow, shaky breath, and tightens his hands in the sheets on either side of his knees.

 

“Is…” he starts in a soft wheeze, before clearing his throat to try again, stronger. “Is that it? I didn’t… I didn’t even do anything.”

 

Stanley as well, feeling as if a weight's been lifted, opens his eyes and looks at his brother like he's seeing him for the first time. It's a little hard to believe this is really happening, but as life would progress, looking back on this moment, Stan would realize he was always a being of action. So he takes Ford by the hand and scoots in a little closer.

 

"I was just showin' ya how, dummy. Now it's your turn."

 

“My turn to… oh,” Ford says stupidly. He leans in straight forward again, and repeats the action, pressing a short, closed-mouth kiss to Stan’s lips, before pulling back again and biting the bottom one. “Like that?”

 

"Kinda? Too short, though. C'mere--kiss me again, but open your mouth a little this time, and tilt your head like I did." Feeling a little more bold, Stan lets his hand rest on Ford's knee.

 

Ford feels his mouth go dry, but he nods and licks his lips. He closes his eyes and leans in again, and this time he lets his lips part just slightly. He feels a bit of moisture on Stan’s lower lip from where their waterlines touch, and a shiver runs through his whole body. He feels warm, and special, and __good__.

 

He doesn’t pull away immediately, this time he just closes his mouth over Stan’s lip and then open is again to give him a second kiss right away, his hands white-knuckling the sheets. He feels absolutely unstoppable, like he could take on the world with this feeling building in his chest. For so long he’s been waking up from dreams exactly like this feeling guilty, but now it’s happening for __real__.

 

When he pulls away this time, he’s breathing harder and his eyes are half-lidded. “What… what do I do with my hands?” he whispers his question-- anything to get another excuse to kiss him again.

 

Stanley gasps when their lips part, taking a breath into his burning lungs. "Here . . . like this."

 

He threads the fingers of his hand with Ford's, which has always been a little awkward due to his brother's extra digit, but somehow they've always made it work. With his hand laced together with his brother's, Stanley scoots forward a few inches, until they're practically on top of each other, and he guides Ford's other hand to his hip, then brushing his fingers against his brother's cheek, he leans in for another kiss.

 

This one is breathless and soft, not skilled really, though Stan perhaps has more practice than Ford. Their noses brush together, and Stan's sure that Ford can hear his heart pounding from inches away, and he wonders to himself if he's feeling as floaty and odd. If he's been daydreaming about this too.

 

Ford leans in until he almost falls on top of Stan, and he catches himself by just throwing his arm around his shoulders. They’re chest to chest now and he makes a soft noise through his nose. He feels warm, too warm-- warm enough that it feels like there’s a problem. So he pulls back one more time, outright panting now.

 

“Boys! Your father needs your help in the shop!” their mother’s voice calls from the other side of the apartment, and Ford scrambles to pick up his glasses, jamming them back on over his ears.

 

He looks at Stan for a moment, wide-eyed and still red-faced. “Uh… good… good lesson,” he clears his throat. “Maybe, uh… I mean, I’ll ask you for… if I need more help… you know?”

 

"Yeah--!" Stanley scrambles over to the ladder, and looks up at his brother in disbelief before muttering another soft, but elated affirmation, then he slides down the ladder and tugs his shoes back on before rushing out of the room, an absolute bundle of joy. He has to try to get himself in order before he sees his father, otherwise he might ask questions, but already Stanley feels so much lighter, and he can only hope Ford will ask for another lesson.


	2. First (real) Kiss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the stans explore their sexuality in this chapter, if you don't appreciate those themes you can scoot on to chapters 3 or 4, or just tab out. you are responsible for the media you consume

It’s been a few years since that kiss. Ford never did ask for another lesson, whether he was too shy or too grossed out by the thought of what they’d done, Stan never really knew. But he never pushed it, content to live for the rest of his life with the fulfilled feeling of knowing he’d gotten to kiss Ford at least once.

 

The years pass, and they grow from young boys into young men. At fourteen, Stan was starting to fill out, grow broader and stronger (and a little bit fatter) while Ford stayed lean and pretty, with a smooth pimple-free face and narrow hips that Stan found himself watching a lot as they grew older. Ford isn’t very physically gifted, and he never has been, his asthma prevents him from being too active-- but Stan had been excited to attend a boy scouting camp, and there had been a discount for families with more than one child, so Ford agreed to attend as well, even though it’s far more physical activity than he would prefer.

 

It's a few hours past lunch three days into the camp, when the boys are just preparing to go swimming in the lake, when Filbrick's truck pulls up at the campground and the man himself gets out to speak with the coordinators. It takes some doing, finding Stanley, but he's pulled out rough housing with a few other boys, by the ear, and dragged off angry as a hornet by his father, who puts a lid on his frustration real fast.

 

He tries to argue with his father, but they're already heading down the road before he really has two words out. Suffice to say, he's a bit worried about leaving his brother alone, usually Pops takes both of them if things need moving, but his father had insisted that only Stanley come, hoping that his brother would make more friends at the day camp without Stanley casting a shadow over him.

 

However, his father hadn't seen the way that some of the other boys had been bullying his brother, so as they leave the camp in their rear view mirror, Stan can't help but worry about what might happen to Stanford while he's gone.

 

Unlike spending time alone with his mother, being alone with his father without Ford is a fucking nightmare. Ford usually acts as a buffer between Filbrick and Stanley’s very similar personalities, and being alone with him is absolutely atrocious. He’s meaner than usual, nitpicks more than usual, and Stan can’t do anything right, even when he does everything Filbrick asks of him. He can’t pick things up right (use your knees not your back!) he can’t put them down right (not so __hard__ , you knucklehead) he can’t move boxes right (those are fragile, be careful!) he can’t even sit down right (sit on something __other__  than the brand new merchandise, would ya?!) and by the time it’s six PM and Caryn is heading off to go pick up Ford for the night, Stan is about ready to pluck his own father’s eyes out.

 

At the very least, Filbrick relinquishes him to go run upstairs, and he sits on the couch to just enjoy silence for a few minutes before he turns on the TV to watch a Bonanza rerun. He’s forty minutes into an episode before he realizes Caryn still isn’t back with Ford… which is a little weird. It’s only about a ten minute drive to pick him up, fifteen with heavy traffic, and there and back she should have been home by now.

 

Just as he thinks that, he nearly jumps out of his skin when the phone rings. He picks it up from the table beside the couch, feeling weird. “Hello?”

 

“Stanley?” it’s his mother’s voice, she sounds breathless and a little panicked. “Where’s your father, is he there? I need’a talk to him.”

 

"No Ma, Pops went down to the dock to check out a shipment or somethin'. Is everything alright?" Stanley twists the phone cord in his fingers, worry coming across his voice even as it crackles over the line. He wants to ask if Ford is okay, but something keeps him from speaking.

 

“No, it’s not alright,” Caryn’s voice is strained. “I’m at the hospital with your brother right now and I’m preparing one hell of a tongue lashing for your father when I see him next for just leavin’ Stanford alone like he did. If he gets home before I do, you tell him he’d better stay put or I’ll bite his ears off next time I see him.”

 

"Wait Ma, don't hang up! What happened? Is Stanford gonna be alright?" Stanley's voice tears at his throat, and he can already feel tears welling up. He __knew__. He knew and yet he let his father take him--he could have refused, but instead he followed along and now his brother's in the hospital.

 

“He’ll be just fine, Stanley, don’t you worry. He’s more shook up than anything, but they’re x-rayin’ his arm right now to make sure--” the sound of a door opening behind her cuts her off, and he hears the muffled static of her pressing the phone to her shoulder, along with some muffled speech, and then a moment later she’s speaking again. “I’ve got to go, they’re done with the x-rays. We’ll be home in half an hour, don’t let your father leave again if he comes back.”

 

With that, she hangs up the phone, leaving Stan in silence with the knowledge that his father let his brother got whatever hell rained down upon him. Filbrick should have known that Ford isn’t able to defend himself when he’s alone, he’s too weak and too scared to fight back, he just locks up. Filbrick __knows__ that, damn it, he watched when Ford was getting the tar beat out of him for the brief amount of time he took boxing lessons too!

 

He can't stop pacing, two thoughts playing through his mind at once--how it's all his fault, and he should have just taken the beating from their father to save Ford from getting hurt, and how it's all their Dad's fault for leaving him to fend for himself. He cannot seem to reconcile the two thoughts, and finds himself practically wearing a hole in the hardwood floor with how fast and hard he's pacing.

 

Filbrick doesn’t come home first, which is a relief because Stan was not looking forward to getting in __another__  fight with the man on behalf of his mother. Ford comes up the stairs first wearing hospital clothes of all things, a paper gown and matching paper pants. He looks absolutely exhausted, with a bruise ringing one puffy eye and a sling around his right arm, wrapped up in a cast. As soon as he sees Stan his eyes fill with tears, though his expression remains blank.

 

A moment later Caryn appears behind him on the warpath, and she gives her boy’s head a smooch before she starts scouring the apartment in search of Filbrick, leaving the boys standing in the living room.

 

"Do you wanna go to the bedroom? Looks like Ma's about to tear into Pops." He only receives a nod from Ford, and taking him by his good hand, he leads him off to their room, where he shuts and locks the door behind them for good measure.

 

Things are about to get loud, but in the calm before the storm, Stanley wraps his arms around his brother carefully, nuzzling his nose into his hair, "Stanford I'm sorry . . . Pops wanted me to--I shoulda said no. I'm so sorry."

 

Ford just leans into his brother’s embrace, and he turns his head to press his face into his shoulder. “S’okay,” he murmurs, his voice crackly and quiet, like he hasn’t used it in a while. “S’not your fault.”

 

They just sit there together for a while, comforted by one another’s proximity, but then the sound of the front door opening reaches them, followed by their mother’s shrill voice shouting, “FILBRICK ELMER PINES!”

 

Ford flinches, and whimpers, and turns tighter against Stan as their mother lays into their father about irresponsibility and putting her son in danger and making selfish choices. Filbrick doesn’t take it lying down either, he shouts right back at her about how it’s his house and he’s the head of the household and he makes the rules and blah blah blah, they’ve heard it a million times before. Ford starts to cry.

 

A glass shatters somewhere in the house, and Filbrick shouts louder, followed by more shrill screaming from Caryn. Stanley is careful when he wraps his arm more tightly around his brother, letting him rest against his broader chest and he swallows the tight lump in his throat, "S'okay . . . we'll make it through this. He never hits Ma, you know that, and the door's locked, if he tries to come in here he's gonna have to break the door down, Sixer."

 

The front door slams again and silence falls over the apartment, but they don’t know yet which parent left. The door knob to their bedroom door jiggles a moment later but it catches on the lock, and the sound of their mother’s voice through the door makes him instantly sag with relief.

 

“You boys alright in there?” she asks, sounding hoarse.

 

“We’re alright, ma,” Ford answers softly.

 

“How’s pizza and puddin’ sound for dinner?” she offers gently. It’s a favorite of the household, and usually reserved for birthdays or other celebrations, but at this point the boys could use a little comfort food.

 

"Sounds great, Ma," Stanley calls, his voice a little shaky. "We'll be out in a minute, just tryin' to calm Sixer down. He's had a rough night." Caryn agrees and zips off again, to make calls and do her motherly thing, and Stan, quiet now, turns back to his brother. "Hey it's alright. We're okay." He smiles softly. "What d'ya need me to do?"

 

Ford just shakes his head. He seems to have gone nonverbal, which isn’t unusual for him under high stress, so Stan just holds him until dinner is ready, rocking him slightly to soothe him. When their pizza arrives, they sit at the table and eat while Caryn and Stan make awkward, strained smalltalk. Filbrick isn’t back yet, but honestly it’s a blessing that he’s gone. Ford barely touches his pizza, but he does have a double serving of pudding, and none of them are about to tell him he can’t.

 

He turns in early and Stan can’t bear the thought of not being nearby, so he also turns in even though it’s only nine pm, lingering in the living room only long enough to kiss his ma good night and wish her luck for whenever Filbrick gets home. He tells her to knock on their door if their dad gets to be too much, and she promises him she will, but he knows she won’t. She never does.

 

When he comes to the bedroom, the lights are all out and he sees the lump of his brother curled up on the bottom bunk-- Stan’s bed --with his back to the door. His sling is on the ground, as well as his socks and jeans, meaning he’s just in his briefs and sleep shirt, curled up in Stan’s bed.

 

Shucking his shoes and jeans, Stan crawls into bed behind his brother--it wouldn't be the first time they slept together, so if Ma comes in later, it won't be all that out of the ordinary to find them curled up next to each other. They are twins after all.

 

Carefully, Stanley pulls the blankets over them and curls his arm around Ford, nuzzling against his neck in the quiet. He can tell he's still awake by the rise and fall of his breath, "I'd ask if you're feelin' better but ya got a broken arm."

 

“Not broken,” Ford murmurs, the first words he’s uttered since he went silent before dinner. “Spiral fracture.”

 

"Whoa hey, that's better than a break, right bro?" Stanley mutters, running his hand down Ford's shoulder--the feather light sensation of his brother's rough hands sends goosebumps creeping along his skin. "And hey, we got pizza."

 

That coaxes a very small smile out of Ford. “They stole my swim trunks,” he murmurs a moment later, his smile falling. “Held me under the water until I started struggling. Someone elbowed me in the eye… I think it was an accident. I came up for air finally and they dragged me naked with my hand behind my back and tied me to a tree. Said it was a prank. Counselor didn’t find me for half an hour… I think. I don’t think we’re going back there. I’m sorry Stanley, I know you-- you wanted to go to that camp--” his voice breaks into another weak, hoarse, heartbreaking little sob.

 

"It's okay, I don't want anything to do with those freaks, considerin' what they did to ya. They can all rot for all I care." Stan trails his fingers up Ford's chest, trying to soothe him as he wracked with tears all over again. "You don't gotta apologize, Sixer . . . you didn't do anything wrong."

 

Ford breathes shakily for a few minutes as he tries to rein in his sobs, and for a while he just enjoys the presence of his brother. He feels so big and warm behind his back, heavy and broad in a way that Ford just hasn’t filled out like yet. He’s not sure if he ever will, and honestly he’s not sure he wants to. He likes being smaller than Stan.

 

When he speaks up again, his voice is so quiet it’s like he’s afraid to talk at all. “Can I… could you do something for me?” he asks. “I’m… embarrassed to ask.”

 

Stan props himself up on an elbow and smiles, despite his brother's inability to see it and he laughs, "Sure thing bro, whaddaya need?"

 

Ford presses his lips into a thin line, afraid to even speak for a moment as he pushes his face into Stan’s pillow. But he lifts his head a moment later and turns shiny eyes up at Stan. “You remember when we were littler, and you used to… lay on top of me sometimes when I was sad or scared, and it would calm me down? I know it’s been a while… couple years since you did that-- if we’re too old now to do it that’s okay, I just thought-- it’s stupid, I’m sorry--”

 

Stan's belly does a familiar little flip flop, and he clears his throat, ears turning very visbily red, even in the dark room. "That's not weird . . . I thought you were gonna ask me to pick your nose or somethin'. C'mon, turn over--I'm a lot bigger now that I used to be, ya don't think it'll hurt do ya? I don't wanna make it worse."

 

“It won’t hurt,” Ford says, turning over onto his back. He was so afraid that Stan would tell him it was childish for him to still want his brother to lay on top of him. He doesn’t know how old they’ll get before Stan will think this is too weird to keep doing, so he relishes every single second of it while he can.

 

Stan too, realizes that the time they have to be intimate together might be growing to a close--they won't always be young boys together in the quiet of their room, eventually life might pull them apart. Those are fears Stanley's long tried not to acknowledge, but it's difficult now that his brother is staring him in the face-- he might not always be there to protect him, or to take care of him after something like this happens.

 

Stan positions himself between Ford's legs with his brother's thighs splayed around him, hunched over in the tiny space under the bunk, which they're definitely getting too big to feasibly use any more--Stan himself is hulking compared to his brother, but he's always been bigger, it's just gotten more pronounced now that they're teenagers, and Stanely's involved in sports.

 

Sighing, Stan shifts and lays his body over Ford's and the instant he does, it's entirely too obvious how much their bodies have changed. Puberty's really bulked Stan up, he's heavy now, muscular and broad, but his tummy is still as soft as ever. He shifts on top of Ford to pull the blankets over them so that their mother doesn't come in on the scene and think the worst, and now, nose to nose with Ford, he gives a breathless laugh.

 

"Is this helpin'?"

 

Ford sighs in relief when the comfort of a heavy, heavy weight crushes down on top of him. “All the way,” he whispers, wrapping his good arm around Stan’s shoulders to beckon him down further, until he’s properly laying on top of Ford with his head tucked into his shoulder. “Yes…” Ford wheezes slightly. It’s difficult to draw breath, but fuck it if he isn’t absolutely laid low by the tingling pleasure of being weighed down.

 

There’s something so primal about it, about the way it feels to have a body lying on top of him, warm and soft and big and __heavy__. Not only the usual comfort of pressure over his whole body, but also the separate, hot-bellied pleasure of feeling close to someone.

 

Not just someone. Stan. He’s close to __Stan__. He has Stan weighing down between his legs. The realization hits him like a ton of bricks and he exhales hotly against Stan’s neck, his entire body shivering as tingles lift goose bumps up on his arms and legs, and his good hand threads through the baby hairs at the back of Stan’s shaved head. He says nothing, he just turns his face to press into the side of Stan’s neck, and he inhales his scent.

 

Equally aroused and desperate for the contact to continue, Stanley's whole body grows hot atop Ford's. He's burning up, like he's got a fever, but it's not illness making his blood run hot this time. Around the same time that his brother becomes aware that they're pressed up together in such an intimate way, Stan realizes it himself, and damn him if he doesn't give a purposeful little wriggle, under the guise of getting comfortable.

 

"Sixer . . . I'm not hurtin' ya, right? I don't wanna hurt ya." Another wiggle of his hips, and their clothed groins rut against one another, and Stan's having a very difficult time fighting his body's reaction to that feeling, Ford is going to feel it and he won't be able to hide it. A big part of him really doesn't want to hide it anymore.

 

Especially since they'd hit puberty, he thinks about Stanford in a lot of inappropriate ways-- fantasizes about just being near him in the way one might a lover. Holding hands and kissing openly where others could see, sitting close in public. Of course, he knows that's all impossible, but sometimes the feeling is so overwhelming that Stan just can't even be around his brother without his heart racing and his palms going hot and sweaty.

 

The moment that Stan’s hips grind down, Ford’s brain short circuits and shuts all the way off. He forgets that they’re brothers, he forgets all the things he’s told himself for years, ever since that single kiss they shared in their bunk bed that hazy October afternoon four years ago. He forgets all of his self control and all of his excuses, all of his justifications and complicated emotional gymnastics he puts himself through to explain his feelings: we’re twins, it’s a proximity thing, I’ll grow out of it…

 

He forgets everything, and just makes a high-pitched gasping sound into the side of his brother’s neck. His thighs clench around Stan’s hips and his toes curl in the sheets, and his briefs suddenly feel way too tight and way too itchy. Sweat gathers in the center of his chest as Stan’s body, heavy and burning hot moves on top of him, and Ford leaves a wet spot in the side of his neck when he opens his mouth and __moans__.

 

There's no chance that Stan is going to waste this, not when Ford is so open and willing--needy, in fact. He's holding Stan hostage with the grind of his hips and the pull of his thighs, that soft suckling mouth on his neck and Stan grinds down again, his breath coming hot and heavy over Ford's clothed shoulder.

 

"God Sixer . . ." Stan grunts, his voice a low growl in his brother's ear, and he rubs himself against Ford with more purpose now, his thick cock filling out his boxers, hanging heavy against his brother's, the thick drag of it maddeningly good for both of them.

 

Ford leans back and pushes Stan up by the shoulders until he props up on his elbows, and for a moment ice floods Stan’s veins as he thinks he’s somehow impossibly misjudged what just happened and he’s about to be thrown off. But then Ford is just __looking__  at him with those big blue eyes, shiny and warm with his pupils blown so wide. For just a moment, Ford considers giving into the gnawing at the back of his mind, whispering at him to tell Stan this is wrong, they can’t do this… but he doesn’t __want to__.

 

Instead, he just clasps his hands together at the back of his brother’s neck and pulls him down until their mouths collide. Their teeth click as Ford catches him with his mouth open, and he pours his tongue into Stan’s mouth without thinking. For once, he doesn’t want to think.

 

This is nothing like the kiss they shared innocently in Ford’s bunk four years ago. This is hot and frantic, inexperienced but so completely raw, fueled by passion and desperation and years of unclean thoughts from both sides. Ford’s hips grind up, his briefs tenting between his legs and the fabric is too rough against his dry skin but he doesn’t want to stop, even just long enough to pull them down. He wraps his legs around Stan’s hips and winds his arms around his shoulders, holding on like a koala as his brother humps him into the bed.

 

Stanley's body bears down on him, so heavy and hot that it seems impossible that one person could feel this good. His mouth opens in kind, accepting Ford's tongue, pushing and prodding against his in sloppy motions that are unpracticed and clumsy, but neither of them care.

 

Neither of them have ever had sex before, but Stan is pretty sure this is the greatest feeling in the universe, his clothed cock gliding against his brother's. There's that familiar, low thrum growing in his belly, hot as lava and heavy as a stone, pinning him down against Ford with the force of his own need, plus gravity.

 

Ford breaks the kiss first when he comes, curling into his brother so tightly that his nails dig crescents into Stan’s back through his shirt. He bites the fabric and whimpers, his hips bouncing up against Stan’s and his legs going tight around his waist. He holds on for dear life with all four limbs as the most amazing sensation fills his entire body that he’s ever felt in his life.

 

He knows what orgasms are, mechanically, and he’s even heard Stan touching himself on the bottom bunk more than once over the years when he thought Ford was asleep. But he’s never actually __had__  one before now, and lying here under Stan with pleasure and warmth swirling through his entire body, shaking with pleasure, he feels bright and alive with validation. A calm washes over him as he realizes all at once that this is exactly where he wants to be, where he’s always wanted to be, and all the nasty whispers at the back of his mind fade away; a product of everything he’s ever been told by everyone else in society.

 

They’re all wrong. There is nothing sweeter than this.

 

Stan comes apart soon after, losing himself to bliss-- he's had orgasms before, many nights, lying alone in his bunk, often fantasizing about his brother while looking at the empty images in his girly magazines. This is so different, sharing it with someone, but not just anyone. Sharing the moment with Ford. Coming apart at the seams, wrapped up in his brother's embrace.

 

His head goes fuzzy, and Stan drops his forehead against Ford's panting hard through his nose as his whole body goes lax and he relaxes on top of him, melting like a popsicle in the summer heat, reveling in the soft afterglow and the cottony buzz of pleasure between his ears.

 

Ford breaks the silence first, with a single word, softly whispered and filled with love and promises, “ _ _Stanley__.”

 

He runs his hand through Stan’s buzzed hair and mouths at the side of his neck, shivering against him and into him, curled up and around him and holding him in a vice embrace. Stan isn’t going anywhere, not even if he wanted to-- but Ford gets the feeling he doesn’t want to.

 

"Whaddid we just do?" Stan asks, dazed. "That was--Sixer . . ." he gulps thickly, and at first it really does sound like regret, but a moment later, he's nuzzling his brother, breathing out soft and warm against his neck. "That felt so good."

 

“I think… I think we just made love,” Ford says in a soft, shaky voice. He breathes out a hot, wet laugh against Stan’s shoulder, and though the edge of his cast digs into his brother’s back, he still hugs him so tightly he might fuse with his very soul anyway. He starts to cry again, muffled, but it’s mingled in with frantic, delighted laughter.

 

Stan laughs dumbly, "I think you're right."

 

And he squeezes himself down in the space between Ford's body and his arms, trying to climb inside of him for all the pressure he's bearing down on him, and he cries too. He cries with relief and the intense feeling of utter completeness he feels in that moment.

 

“We can do this again, right?” Ford whispers the words into his skin, smearing tears and saliva into his neck, but neither of them care about the mess they’re making. “Because I wanna do this… over and over again. I wanna do this forever. I wanna be like this forever.”

 

Stan pulls back just a hair to look down at him over his nose, "Yeah I mean--I wanna do that too, Sixer . . . can we? What if--what if one day we're not together anymore, though? What will we do?"

 

“Don’t be stupid,” Ford whispers, and angles his chin up to give Stan another kiss, giddy that it’s something he can just __do now__ , like he’s dreamed of for so long. He grinds his wet face into his brother’s cheek and laughs almost too loudly as joy fills his veins with a cottony euphoria. “We’re __always__ going to be together.”


	3. Virginity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> even more explicit underage sexuality exploration, so mind the warnings

Ford is never happier than when he’s alone with Stan. This secret that they’ve been carrying for a full year is as thrilling as it is terrifying, but as they pass the one year mark of the first time they made love, Ford is just as enamored by his brother as he was the first time they found comfort in one another’s arms.

 

The only real downside to what they have, is that they can never be public with their affections. In and among people, they have to be brothers and nothing but brothers-- and that’s all they’ll __ever__ be able to be. It makes Ford sad in real, gut-wrenching ways that puts him in funks that last for hours if he lets himself think about it too seriously, so he always tries to put those thoughts on the backburner and just focuses on how happy he feels when he’s alone with Stan.

 

The days are spent sharing meaningful secret looks and little touches on the arm or shoulder that don’t mean anything to anyone around them at school, but light a fire in their bellies that is consummated every night after they lock the bedroom door and tumble into bed to grind against one another to completion, sometimes more than once per night. It’s not the same as being able to publicly have a girlfriend, but it’s what they have to work with.

 

Time apart is excruciating. When school pulls them away from one another for long periods, there's a real and tangible feeling of loss that's only put at ease when they see each other between periods, or at lunch, when they can sit close and talk to each other with their knees touching under the table.

 

Sometimes they worry that people will catch on. Stares or touches lingering too long, but no one seems to suspect a thing, least of all their parents, despite their locked doors and lovemaking deep into the night. Some nights, that closeness they possess is the only thing that holds them together after being yelled at by their father, or completely destroyed by school.

 

Stan finds his interest in girls has taken a hit, and he doesn't know if he should be concerned about it. His interest in anyone else but Ford has pretty much left, which raises some brows at school, as Stan had been a skirt chaser with the best of them, but he's so fulfilled by Ford that seeking out attention from anyone else just feels cheap by comparison.

 

Ford is of two minds on the subject of Stan getting a girlfriend. On the one hand, it would be very convenient if Stan had a girlfriend to hide their relationship behind, so that nobody would ever suspect that Stan was anything other than a red-blooded heterosexual american. Ford would never be subject to suspicions about being gay, everyone is too busy thinking he’s too much of a wimp to land a girl to ever suspect that he might not even be interested in them at all. On the other hand, the idea of Stan using and lying to a girl just to hide what they have makes him feel sick.

 

And on the __other__  other hand, the idea of a girlfriend getting serious and wanting to touch Stanley makes his blood absolutely boil. Over the past year he’s learned everything about making Stanley tick, he’s learned all of his spots and how to twist his hand just right over his cock to make him come in under a minute. And some random girl might come along and think she has even an inkling as to what would make Stan feel good? Please.

 

Which is why when the big winter formal comes around for all of the 10th graders, Ford immediately starts to get nervous. What if Stan asks a girl out? What if she says yes? What if she says yes because she __likes__  him, and then she wants to be his girlfriend? Stan’s had girlfriends before, though they’ve always been girls from town and other schools, never from their own school. But he’s had them, so he must know a thing or two about how to pick up girls. What if he’s just __too__  charming for his own good? Oh what is he thinking, Stan is __always__  too charming for his own good.

 

He’s tearing himself apart over it, and as the date of the dance draws nearer, he finds himself avoiding Stanley. He skirts past him between classes and climbs to his own bunk every night, and doesn’t even make eye contact at the dinner table. He’s absolutely terrified to hear that Stan has asked someone to the dance. Probably Paulina Orchard, she’s been making eyes at him ever since he started to grow muscles, that no-good, dirty rotten tramp, who does she think she is--

 

Snap. Ford drops the two halves of his pencil to his homework book with an angry sigh, and shoves his work off his lap to flop backwards in his bunk. Who is he kidding? Who are they __both__ kidding? He’s the one who said they’d be together forever, but this relationship isn’t sustainable. Stan will have to get married eventually, he’s always wanted a family of his own and Ford can’t provide that. He rolls over in his bunk to put his back to the door, and starts to sniffle.

 

He lies there for a long while, feeling sorry for himself, before the bedroom door clicks open and Stan steps in-- he knows it's him by the heavy gait of his footfalls, distinctly different from his father's, too light to be Caryn's. He shuts the door behind him, and clicks the lock into place, but tonight he's not looking to get his rocks off with his brother.

 

Ford's distance hasn't gone unnoticed, and it's starting to hurt Stanley, like a physical pain in his chest. It aches bone deep that he's just started avoiding him, and Stan, being the oblivious, dundering idiot that he is, doesn't understand why.

 

Shuffling out of his chucks, Stanley slips into his own bunk and passes into uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by his brother's quiet, stifled sobbing. He just lies there awhile, listening before his gruff voice pierces the air, "Sixer, what's wrong?"

 

Ford, awash in a sea of miserable anguish, forgets to outline the majority of his thought process when Stan’s voice cuts through the agony in his chest, and he just blurts out with a tearful,

 

“You’re gonna get __married__.”

 

Stan chuckles, "I am, huh? Who's the lucky girl? Hope she knows how to make tuna casserole."

 

Stan’s joke unfortunately falls flat, and Ford begins to sob. He turns his face into the bed and muffles it into his mattress, but the sound is unmistakable. Stanley cringes at his brother's tears and crosses his arms behind his head, trying to relax but the effort's in vain. Stanley just can't stay still, knowing his brother's crying. 

 

"Sixer . . . why're you thinkin' about me gettin' married?"

 

“The dance,” Ford admits, wheezing into the puddle he’s formed on his sheets. “It’s important-- there are photographers… you’re gonna ask some girl, and she’s gonna say yes and fall in love with you because you’re so charming and handsome and you’re gonna get married after you graduate and have a family with her and we’re gonna forget all about our dreams for the future on our boat.”

 

"What? How'd ya get that into your head? Is this about Paulina? Look she's cute but . . . but I don't want her, Sixer--I want you." He shifts up on his elbow. "I haven't even looked at a girl since you and me started--well ya know."

 

Silence stretches on for a few moments. Ford sniffles, and is quiet again for a few more. And then finally, softly, “Really?”

 

"Yeah, really . . . c'mon, why would I want her? You and me are gonna sail off on that boat one of these days, and then it'll just be you an' me on the high seas, and we won't hafta answer to anybody, or make excuses or nothin'. We can just be ourselves. Why would I trade that in for __Paulina Orchard?__   ** **C'MON!**** "

 

Ford wonders if the rush of pride he feels is selfish, and then Ford wonders if it matters. He crawls to the edge of the bed and climbs down the ladder before slipping into Stan’s bunk and straddling his hips over the blankets. The room is dimly lit, only by the lamp at the foot of the bunks sitting on their dresser, back lighting Ford and casting his face into shadow as he looks down at Stan.

 

“But if you go to the dance alone people might make fun of you,” he says softly, relishing in the intimacy of just being near Stan again. After only four days without, it felt like the worst torture.

 

Big, rough hands go immediately to Ford's hips, his thumbs making little circles over the divet of his hip bones, and he can't help but raise his groin to meet Ford's ass, it's just second nature at this point.

 

"I guess I'm gettin' made fun of this year, then. We can sit over in the loser corner together and laugh at all the idiots on the dance floor."

 

Ford can’t help but bend down and kiss Stan’s stupid face from forehead to chin. Maybe he shouldn’t be happy about the fact that his brother would willingly take a social bullet for him… but he is. He really, really is.

 

The dance comes, and ostensibly they attend stag. Their mother takes pictures anyway, and in secret Stan wears a little button-hole rosebud that matches Ford’s pocket square to the shade. Nobody would notice if they weren’t looking, but to them it means everything. They attend the dance and spend as much of it together as they can get away with without it looking weird. It was cute when they were eleven, hanging out at school dances instead of with other people, but at fifteen, it starts to look creepy.

 

So they mingle a little bit-- or rather, Stan mingles while Ford remains glued to the wall to prevent strangers from bumping into him from behind, and he watches Stan goof off with the other kids with a warm smile on his face. Paulina Orchard is there, on the arm of Crampelter no less, which only serves to make Ford smug. Some part of him realizes he probably shouldn’t be making assumptions about the personality, morals and values of a girl he’s never had a single conversation with based on the fact that she looks at his brother in a way that makes him jealous sometimes, but at the same time he bitterly thinks that the two of them deserve one another.

 

Caryn leaves about halfway through the dance to give her boys some privacy--after seeing Stan out on the dance floor, mingling with the crowd, she's certain he'll be bringing home a girl; but the glances he continually steals toward his brother are far less platonic than his mother suspects.

 

The dance goes on into the night. People file in and out of gymnasium, couples leaving together to find someplace quiet to kiss where the chaperones can't see. Stan finds himself wishing he could cut a rug with his brother, wishing he could kiss him out in the open, but that isn't their life, and it never will be.

 

When the group Stan had been chatting with moves off for the night, and there's just a few less people milling about, he slips over to the bleachers where his brother is sitting, and he slips into a comfortable silence beside him. Stanley's face is red up to his ears, he looks happy, in spite of everything, and Paulina and Crampelter are nowhere to be seen. It's been a good night.

 

"Hey Sixer," Stan finally says, grinning at him slyly, "Ya wanna . . . go behind the bleachers and suck face?"

 

The smile that had filled Ford’s face as soon as Stan came over vanishes in an instant when he says that, replaced instead by a burning heat that fills his cheeks up to his ears. A hot drop hits him in the stomach and he feels his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth make an audible click when he unsticks it.

 

“What?” he hisses, leaning in. “Are you __crazy?__  There are still __people__ here, what if someone sees us?”

 

"Yeah? So what, that's part of the fun." Stan shrugs. "I guess we could just wait until we get home, if you're __chicken__." He flaps his arms, making mocking chicken noises in his brother's general direction.

 

“I’m not __chicken__ ,” Ford shoves at his brother’s shoulder, feeling that warmth in his belly spread into a fire. “It’s not just like two boys getting caught kissing, that would be bad enough. We’re __brothers__ , if anyone caught us…”

 

He trails off, spellbound by the idea of being pinned to a wall by his brother in a place where people could stumble across them. It’s unlikely, there are only a few stragglers left behind at the dance, even most of the chaperones have already left. The chances of them being caught are extremely slim, but not impossible, and the thought of actually going through with it has his blood absolutely boiling in his stomach. If they were caught it would absolutely, undoubtedly ruin their lives, probably forever. But if they aren’t caught, it’ll be something he daydreams about for the rest of his life. His cost-benefit analysis powers are swiftly being overtaken by the probing, desperate warmth coiling down between his legs.

 

“Fuck it,” he whispers. “Let’s do it.”

 

Stan's the first to get up, and he casually walks around the side of the bleachers, only to disappear under them moments later. It's not the most romantic place, full of dirt and dust, and old garbage, but it's the best they can do. Ford waits a bit before he moves off to join him, but once he's within arms reach, Stan grabs him by the tie and slams him so hard into the gymnasium wall that all the wind is knocked out of him, then he crushes his mouth against Ford's in a bruising kiss that leaves them both wanting for more.

 

They kiss and embrace, Ford's hands slipping into the back pockets of Stanley's slacks, and Stan rucks his brother's shirt up out of his belt, letting his hand trail over his skinny belly, breaking the kiss only to gasp for air. The desire he feels for Stanford is all consuming, so big that it feels like he doesn't have room in his body to contain it all.

 

"I want you--I wanna . . . ah jeeze, Sixer. I want you."

 

“Not here,” Ford whispers, his voice tight and frantic, but even as he says it he rocks his hips up against Stan’s. He swallows a moan along with Stan’s tongue, winding his arms around his neck. Something about this kiss feels different-- it has to be their proximity to other people, and how normal it feels to be hiding under the bleachers to kiss just like any normal couple.

 

The word __couple__  takes the wind out of him as his twelve fingers dig into the meat of Stan’s ass to drag his hips forward against his own, and he whimpers into his brother’s mouth as his cock twitches in his slacks. They **_**_are_**_** a couple, aren’t they? They fool around like a couple and hang out like a couple, hold hands and goof off and go to dances as a couple… they do everything a couple does.

 

“Stanley,” he gasps, running his hands through his brother’s short hair. He’s panting and hoarse, and the pleasure is starting to make his legs tremble when he says, “I wanna be your boyfriend.”

 

"I wanna be your boyfriend too." Stan growls, not even a second to process, he's just agreeing--his heart tells him it feels right, nothing else could ever feel this right. All those dates, something had always been missing, but with Ford wrapped up in his arms, it's like the final piece to a puzzle he's been trying to solve his entire life.

 

“Stanley, I’m serious,” Ford laughs breathlessly, winding his arms around his neck. “I’m serious. I know we can’t ever tell anyone… we couldn’t even tell anyone if we weren’t brothers, but-- I want it to be real for __us__. Can I be your boyfriend?”

 

Stan stops pawing at him for a few seconds, and glances up into Ford's eyes, searching. He can tell how serious he is, so he takes a step back and just thinks for a minute before answering, "I wanna be together forever, Sixer . . . so yeah. I wanna be your boyfriend."

 

Ford rides that high all the way home. Their mom comes back to pick them up at midnight and excuses them right to bed when they stumble almost drunkenly into the living room, exhausted and euphoric from an incredible evening. Ford shucks his suit in a heap on the floor and changes into his favorite pajamas, just an oversized sleep shirt with matching loose shorts, striped baby blue and white and patterned with tiny navy blue anchors.

 

He climbs directly into Stan’s bed without even glancing at his own bunk, and curls up on his side with a sly smile on his face as he watches Stan undress.

 

“God,” he murmurs softly as Stan shucks his jacket off backwards, and the fabric of his dress shirt strains at his chest and belly. Ford chucks a pillow at him, smiling like a dope. “You’re so sexy.”

 

"Heh, yeah? You into all this?" Stan flexes, biceps tugging at his shirt sleeves. He comes to the edge of the bed, and tries to be all slick and smooth with his tie, but finds himself fumbling with the knot, like an imbecile.

 

"Err . . . a little help, Sixer?"

 

Ford grins and sits up, turning to flank Stan’s knees with his own, and reaches up to yank him down by his tie into a kiss. He opens his mouth against Stan’s as he works the tie loose and then off, biting his lower lip and lapping against his tongue as he slowly unbuttons Stan’s shirt and tugs it free from his belt.

 

He gives a soft groan of appreciation into Stan’s teeth when his hands find and squeeze the fat on his belly through his undershirt, before slipping down to unbuckle his belt and tug his fly undone. He mouths across his jaw, kissing his neck as he paws Stan through his slacks, and a fluttery sort of giddiness settles in his belly as he considers his next words very carefully.

 

Over the course of the last year, Ford and Stan have fooled around in almost every way imaginable. They’ve rutted together both with their clothes on __and__  off, with and without the use of hands. They’ve tugged eachother to completion, and on more than one occasion they’ve gotten bold with their mouths, though neither of them feel practiced enough with it yet to be confident about it. But the one thing they’ve never done is go all the way, the __real__  way.

 

But they just became boyfriends tonight. That makes what they’re doing official, and it gives him the confidence to murmur against Stan’s mouth, “I want you to fuck me tonight.”

 

"Ya want me to--wait what?" Stanley pulls back, looking down at Ford, almost incredulous. "You're serious? Ya want to-to actually have sex?" He sweats nervously, pawing at the back of his neck. Stan's tummy does a backflip, and his cock gives a hard, eager jerk, tugging at the fabric of his suit pants, as he swallows the lump in his throat. "Are ya sure? It's just--we've never done that before."

 

“I know,” Ford tugs him back down by the collar of his undershirt to kiss up along his neck. “I’ve been practicing for a while. In the shower, mostly, or when you’re at boxing lessons. I wanted to see what it felt like and make sure I would like it… and I do. I really, __really__ do. I want to do it with you. Do you want to?”

 

"Oh God, Sixer-- I've been waitin' so long for you to ask me. Yeah I want to, God I want to. I'm about to cream my shorts just thinkin' about it." He runs his fingers along Ford's sensitive sides, up along his soft tummy and chest, tweaking his nipples just slightly through the fabric of his pajama shirt. "But uh . . . I dunno what I'm doin'. Not the first thing. You're gonna have to show me how." Stanley glances away sheepishly, his ears turning pink. "Don't make fun of me."

 

“I won’t make fun of you,” Ford whispers, and gives his brother another kiss. “Grab the lotion from the bathroom and bring it here-- and be quiet.”

 

Ford waits with baited breath for Stan to do so, and he manages to come back without being noticed by their parents, which is a relief since he’s currently walking around with a tent pole in his pants. Ford rolls over onto his belly on Stan’s bunk as his brother locks the door and shuts off the light, and finishes undressing until he’s in only his undershirt and boxers, all bare arms and legs as he nervously straddles the back of Ford’s thighs and pulls his shorts down so the elastic rests just under his ass.

 

“All you have to do is get your fingers wet and put them in,” Ford whispers, folding his arms under his head and looking back over his shoulder at Stan. “Start with just one… your fingers are bigger than mine.”

 

"Okay, that sounds easy enough." Stanley replies, and he pumps out some lotion onto his fingers, slicking them up. Then, parting Ford's cheeks, he works his finger nervously over the ring of muscles there, scared to push too hard and hurt him, nerves making him shake and sweat.

 

"Isn't it gonna hurt? I don't wanna hurt you."

 

“It doesn’t hurt,” Ford’s words come out shakily on an exhaled breath. Even just feeling Stan’s finger rubbing against him has his thighs twitching, and his hips arching back and up. “It felt a little weird at first, but there’s a spot somewhere in there that feels __really__  good… crazy good. I had a hard time touching it myself because of the weird angles I had to work at, but I bet you could find it if you uh… felt around.”

 

Stan makes a noise of agreement, and swallows the nervous lump in his throat as butterflies explode in his belly and he presses past the tight ring of muscle, finger slipping inside. The sensation is strange on his digit--he's never fingered himself before, but Ford is warm and slick, hugging him on all sides, and already Stan feels a thrill of excitement for what's to come.

 

Bracing one hand on Ford's ass, he glides his finger in and out, back and forth with clumsy motions, but even so it feels good-- better than when Ford had fingered himself. On the downstroke, buried in Ford, he does some poking around, trying to find the spot that Ford had indicated, but it all feels the same to his untrained hands.

 

Ford has to bury his face down in his arms in order to keep quiet, but Stan can hear the tiny choked-off whimpers and whines that leave him. Even without finding that spot yet, Stan’s finger feels incredible. The friction of it dragging inside him makes Ford’s tummy clench, and though his fingers aren’t as long as Ford’s, they’re twice as thick and his leverage is so much more powerful.

 

“Stanley--” he whines, high-pitched in his throat. He arches his hips up again, trying to find that spot, trying to make contact with it so he can see stars. He just knows that if Stan can figure out where to touch him, he’ll be able to completely take him apart. “Don’t stop, don’t stop--”

 

Overwhelmed by his brother's apparent ecstasy, Stanley's cheeks burn hot and a heavy throb starts low in his belly. He can't possibly get any harder, all he can think about is the anticipation of feeling his brother for the first time; but he steels himself, takes a deep breath and lets that thick finger slide back inside, and this time, as he strokes down, curling his finger he hits something that sends his brother's hips jerking back to meet him

 

That, Stanley thinks, must be the spot that Stanford had mentioned, so this time, as he pulls back and thrusts back inside, he makes a concerted effort to rub the rough pad of his finger over that spot, and holds there, massaging with gentle rocking motions with his digit buried to the knuckle inside of Ford.

 

Pleasure crashes over Ford like a tidal wave, and he has to sink his teeth into Stan’s pillow just to keep from bellowing out loud. His hips lift up off the bed and his thighs and pelvis shake like he’s about to fall to pieces. He can’t think, he can’t even open his eyes, and though he can __feel__ his cock leaking between his legs, he doesn’t even care that he’s making a mess of his shorts.

 

He wants to shout, he wants to __wail__ , but all he can do is grunt into the pillow under his face through tightly-clenched teeth. His balls clench, and his cock twitches with powerful contractions. He feels close already, he’d vastly underestimated the power of this magic little spot. Where he’d only been able to graze it in passing while fingering himself from behind or between his legs, Stan can actually rub it like he’s trying to scratch a lotto ticket, and Ford is losing his __mind__.

 

From this angle, watching Ford shake apart, Stan feels so powerful that it's scary. It's frightening and intoxicating all at once, to realize that Ford has made himself vulnerable enough to let him do this, that he trusts him so implicitly that he'd let Stan touch him in the most intimate of places, and he knows Stan will be there to take care of him. It's a lot of responsibility, but Stan's eager to accept, and even more willing to continue.

 

Between the rocking of Ford's hips, and Stan's crooked finger, he rubs into that spot like he's searching for gold inside of his brother. He presses all the way to the knuckle, ruts the pad of his finger against it, and keeps his other hand firm on Ford's hip, guiding him to thrust back.

 

"You're so--ah jeeze Sixer . . . ah jeeze . . ."

 

“Another one, please,” Ford wheezes, focusing all of of the willpower in his body into keeping his voice quiet, even as his muscles pulse and flutter involuntarily around Stan’s finger. “Please, please, put in another one.”

 

Stan mutters something in a flustered voice before the sound of the handpump on the lotion can be heard, and then he slips a second finger inside and Ford's world explodes all over again. The stretch is more intense now than it ever has been, even in the past when he'd fingered himself-- Stanley's hands are just so big that having two of them inside makes him feel so heavy and full, and when they drag over that spot, it's like fire ripping through his belly.

 

"You gotta be quiet, Sixer." Stan reminds him delicately, pressing his ass into the bed. "You gotta be quiet."

 

As it turns out, being quiet is the hardest thing Ford has ever done in his entire life. With two fingers pressing and twisting into him, the pillow isn’t enough anymore, he has to cover his mouth with his own hand, and then he clamps his other hand on top of that one just for extra insurance. His eyes cross slightly and roll back as pleasure thrums through his body so intensely that he’s legitimately worried he might just pass out from the intensity.

 

Something builds in his belly that feels familiar, but lower down and more intense than usual, localized down between his legs rather than in his cock. His pelvic floor does a powerful little flip that makes his whole belly clench up, and then just like that he feels himself gush into his shorts, his thighs trembling with an orgasm so intense that he has to pinch his nose shut too just to keep from screaming into his palms.

 

He sags into the bed, twitching with aftershocks and finally pulls his hands back to look up at Stan with watery eyes, who has pulled back slightly with a worried expression when Ford reacted so violently.

 

“I think… I just came,” he hisses through his teeth up at his brother, his voice hoarse and raspy. Stan’s fingers shift just slightly and he gives a tiny yelp, nodding frantically. “I did-- I did, I just came--”

 

"Holy Toledo, you came from just--just my fingers? Just like that?" Stanley looks down at his brother, he himself is shaking, all at once terrified and floating on cloud nine, feeling like he might be transcending into the stratosphere. "Are you okay? What did it feel like?" He sits back on his haunches, his own cock aching for release now, the front of his boxers soaked through with precome.

 

“Good,” Ford laughs under his breath. “So, so good… better than the other way-- when you just touch my-- you know…” he gulps for air, and flexes his muscles around the fingers still planted in his ass. “It felt really warm… warmer than usual. And higher up in my tummy, all the way down my legs. It’s the best thing I’ve ever felt.”

 

Stanley brushes his fingers through short, buzzed hair and he chuckles sheepishly, "Really? Best thing you ever felt? That's--wow." His whole face goes red and hot at the compliment.

 

“Without a doubt,” Ford nods, his expression slack and heated as he looks adoringly back at his brother. “I feel all loose and gooey from the belly button down… I think you should try to put it in now, I think I can handle it. Fuck me, Stanley, fuck me __please__.”

 

"Okay, but you gotta stay quiet--you got kinda loud back there, and we can't have Ma comin' in while we're doin' this . . ." Stan warns.

 

Pulling his fingers out of Ford slowly, Stan tugs down the waistband of his boxers and his heavy cock bounces out, almost comically. He squirts some lotion out into the palm of his hand and coats the thick head and shaft, then taking Ford by the hips, he guides it to his brother's hole and presses it against that loosened ring.

 

He's still met with a bit of resistance-- Stanley's big, and the two of them, never having done this before, might not have prepped Ford quite enough to take him without some burning, but he slips in anyways, fitting snug inside, like the last piece of a puzzle fitting right into place.

 

Stan can't even move at first, he's paralyzed by how good it feels to be hips-deep in his brother--engulfed on all sides by Ford's pulsing body, he's squeezed so good and tight that all he can do is relinquish a strangled sigh, balancing himself over Ford with one hand at his hip, the other on the bed.

 

Instinct takes over then, however, and he gives a few testing thrusts--the glide's a bit rough, the thick head of his cock snagging inside of Ford on the way out and the push back in, splitting him in half with the stretch of it, punching all the air out of his lungs.

 

Ford, who had been terrified that as soon as Stan pushed into him that he would scream, luckily doesn’t have to worry about making a single sound, because as soon as his brother enters him he forgets how to even breathe. It burns a little bit and the sting brings a tear to his eye, but that only lasts for a few moments. Once Stan starts to thrust, all bets are off.

 

Dropping his face back down, Ford practically __swallows__ the pillow just to keep quiet. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt before, the monstrous stretch of Stan filling him all the way to the hilt makes him feel so tiny and vulnerable in an intoxicating, attractive way. He can __feel__  Stan’s cock pushing against his belly, and he wedges one hand under his tummy right where the heavy cockhead is pushing out against his stomach, grinding into the mattress under him with every deep thrust.

 

Ford’s eyes roll back in his head as he hugs the pillow desperately with his other arm, keeping his face smashed into it and his teeth clamped down around it-- but even so, with every thrust he gives whimpering little sounds that he can’t quite choke down despite his best efforts. But they’re so muffled into the pillow that the only way their parents would hear him is if they came to press their ear to the door.

 

Stan throws his head back, completely lost in the thrill of the moment. His mouth is dry, and the only thing he can think about is the instinctive drive to get off, and to get Ford off in kind. He plants one hand on his brother's back, between his shoulder blades and smashes him down into that pillow with the force of his driving hips snapping into him.

 

"Oh God--" He groans, eyes open, staring down at Ford--splayed out for him and laid bare, holding that pillow--he wants to remember this moment for the rest of his life, and takes mental snapshots of the way his brother's back curves up to meet him, of his bare ass. His desperate moans drive Stanley forward, his pace quickening as his climax builds, quicker than ever, speeding him toward release.

 

Ford feels that desperate clenching in his pelvic floor again, just like before with Stan’s fingers, and he realizes with a strained whimper that he’s about to come again, just minutes after the first one. He’s never come twice so quickly before, but he can feel it again, mounting and inexorable.

 

When he comes again, it’s with a __pained__  little grunt as his muscles all twitch and spasm around Stan’s cock. It’s painful, how hard he has to hold his breath just to keep from making a sound, because his entire soul wants to scream and sob with pleasure as his brother’s driving cock prolongs the feeling into maddening bliss. His eyes roll back and every muscle in his body bunches up as he attempts to curl in on himself just to combat the feeling of his body about to fly apart in every direction.

 

Ford's body rolls against him, squeezing him like a vice and it's enough to send Stanley reeling too. He comes inside of Ford, for the first time ever, his whole body seizing with the incredible feeling. It's hard for him to keep quiet, but as usual, Stan just condenses his moans into animal grunts as he thrusts through the orgasm, his whole body throbbing with it.

 

When the spasms leave him, Stanley falls atop his brother, his heavy body squeezing all of the breath out of him. He doesn't even have words, all he can do is pant and try to regain his sense as they lie together.

 

Ford feels like he doesn’t even have a solid form, he’s so floaty. Surely he must have melted into a boneless pile of goo, because that’s about what he feels like. He trembles with aftershocks, and squeaks out wheezy little moans every time he feels Stan’s cock give a little twitch inside him as it goes soft. He’s so hypersensitive that just the feeling of Stan’s breathing against his neck has shivers tingling down the back of his neck and into his belly.

 

It’s Ford who ultimately speaks first, crushed as breathless as he is, and he whimpers out just a quiet, “Stanley…”

 

"Sorry . . ." Stan grunts, and he pulls out slowly, still unsure of etiquette or whether or not he'll hurt Ford. Then, curling up beside his brother, he wraps a heavy arm around him and tosses the blankets over them, nuzzling softly into his neck.

 

"Whoa that was crazy . . . we had sex."

 

Ford feels his ass throb in a way that he’s pretty sure is going to hurt tomorrow, and he has to clench in a hurry when he feels Stan’s load start to leak out of him. He can’t be bothered to get up and do anything about it just yet, so he just turns to face his brother, laughing breathlessly.   
  
”We’ve sorta been doing that already for a year now,” he murmurs, his voice still hoarse. “But that was __real__. We actually did it for real… and we can keep doing it forever. Especially when we’re older and we live alone on the boat together, and nobody’s around so I don’t even have to be quiet. I wanted to yell so loud Stanley, it felt so good… you felt so __good__ in there.”

 

"You felt good too." Stan says, kissing Ford sweetly on the forehead, brushing curly, sweaty hair out of his face. "I wanna be like this forever, Stanford. When we get the boat finished, after school and we sail far away from here . . . I wanna be with you forever."

 

Ford grins from ear to ear, nuzzling his face into the sweat stain in the center of Stan’s chest as he squeezes an arm around his waist, and he agrees in a quiet whisper, “Forever.”


	4. Losing His Mind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we decided to change up the entire scene where stan comes to ford in gravity falls, giving it a different spin to imagine how it would have gone if they used to be a couple

_“Stanley, I… I can’t pass up a chance like this. It was one thing to daydream about the boat when we both thought that neither of us were going anywhere fast, but… this school has cutting-edge programs, and multi-dimensional paradigm theory!”_

__

__“So just like that, you’re gonna give up on everything we ever talked about since we were kids? We’ve been workin’ on that boat for seven_ _ **_**_years_ ** _ ** __, Stanford.”_ _

__

__“I’m not_ _ **_**_giving up_ ** _ ** __, I’m moving_ _ **_**_on_ ** _ ** __. If you would just--”_ _

__

__“Movin’ on from_ _ **_**_what?_ ** _ ** __From our dreams? From_ _ **_**_me?_ ** _ ** __”_ _

__

__“Stanley-- I’d never just_ _ **_**_leave you behind_ ** _ ** __, you have to know that by now. If I get into this school, I could get a job that’ll score our family millions, and the first thing I’ll do is scoop you out of New Jersey to come live with me in a house with_ _ **_**_bathrooms_ ** _ ** __as big as our entire apartment.”_ _

__

__“Oh, sure, and live in your shadow for the rest of my life? I don’t wanna be a charity case, Stanford, I wanted to be_ _ **_**_partners_ ** _ ** __. I thought that’s what you wanted too.”_ _

 

===

 

Nothing ever goes perfectly to plan, does it? When they started the fourth grade, the Pines twins talked about the Stan O’ War nonstop, all the way up to just a few months away from graduation. It all came to an abrupt end with one terrible mistake and a poorly-worded, sorry attempt at an explanation, and just like that, the final little rays of hope that Stanley ever could have convinced Ford to give up on school and join him on the boat were crushed as he was thrown out of the house at just 17 with nothing but a duffel bag of clothes and $45 cash, slipped to him hastily by his concerned by ultimately useless mother.

 

The next couple of years were rough. He found work combing the beach at first, but that paid very little, so he turned to pulling con jobs in seedy bars, and back in the 70's establishments such as that didn't care too much to card the people milling in and out of their doors, as long as they were spending money. Cons only paid so much, and Stan, as he would later put it, was only one half a dynamic duo. Without his brother, or anyone for that matter, to balance him out, he was not nearly as clever or wily as he used to be, so he had to learn how to adapt quickly to the hard knock life.

 

He tried to be his own boss for a number of years, selling faulty merchandise to folks just dumb enough to buy it in good faith, and this ended up getting him thrown out of many places with the threat of prison time if he showed his face again, which in turn led to a name change more than once. His travels took him all over the US and beyond, landed him in prison on three separate occasions, and the cover up of a murder on another.

 

In such a brief window of time, Stan had lived a life more difficult than most, fueled by the desperate need for his family's approval, and at various points, he found himself trying to build his own family.

 

There was Marilyn, his first wife--a terrible union, really. They were ill matched to start with, a relationship founded on a mutal need for control and normality. After he got her pregnant, and figured out fatherhood wasn't for him, he bailed and left her to raise their daughter Candice, alone. Not his finest hour, nor something he would ever be proud of.

 

It would be years and years later that he'd marry Peaches; she was kind, and nurturing, too patient but that's something Stanley had always needed. She made him soft after so much hardship, and had him believing he could redeem himself if he could make a life work with her, but inevitably, as Stanley was wont to do, he got caught up with the wrong people and afraid to get Peaches to get hurt in the process, he left her in the middle of the night, leaving her and the trouble he'd made behind.

 

And that's where his life flat lined.

 

The break from Peaches left him torn up and hurt. Some days, he didn't think he could continue living, but somehow he did. Throughout all of his ordeals, all he could ever think of was where Stanford was, and what he was doing--if he was happier, if he'd graduated and moved on and had a better life someplace soft.

 

Then, one day, as he was feeling sorry for himself, a postcard came--signed by his brother, asking him to visit some podunk little town in nowhere Oregon called Gravity Falls. Something about his brother's hasty scrawl told him that he was in trouble, so the very next day, Stanley packed up and headed out west to find him.

 

Ford’s life these past ten years hadn’t been much smoother. After a rejection from the scouts from West Coast Tech that would have ensured him a full ride, Ford wasn’t set to just give up so easily. He’d reapplied on the merits of his grades alone, and they’d accepted him-- but his family just didn’t have enough money to send him to a school of that caliber, and try as he might, he couldn’t scrape together enough grant and scholarship money by the time school was ready to start. He could have gotten a job and waited an extra year, saving up to get in, but he had his entire life planned out year by year for the next two decades, and he didn’t want to throw everything off balance.

 

So he went to the only school in their price range that would accept him, a little Nothing school full of Nothing people in Nowhere, Iowa called __Backupsmore.__ Ford started a petition that got over 30,000 signatures to change the school’s name to literally anything else that didn’t grind salt into the wounds of the people who went there, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. They just didn’t have the budget to change all of the mugs and bumper stickers. He had to grind his way through four years of under-paid bitter staff and under-funded programs, tripling his own workload every year just to scrape out ahead in the top 1 percentile, but he would settle for absolutely no less, not in a place like that.

 

He hadn’t really planned to make full-time Weirdness Hunting his actual job, the plan had been just to do that as a hobby in the meantime while he sought out a __real__ job, but he got in so over his head so quickly and everything just spiraled out of control. Without Stanley there to remind him of what really mattered, he got so deep in the paint with the possibility of the impossible that he just let himself get lost in it. And the worst part was that he dragged his erstwhile lover, Fiddleford, down with him.

 

Fiddleford is gone now, just like everyone else in Ford’s life, and he’s running out of options. With the threat of nothing less than the safety of the entire multiverse looming over his shoulder, he had no choice but to bite the bullet and track down his brother for the first time in ten years. All of his memories come rushing back, of half-baked plans to hunt monsters as a hobby until he got an adult job, and worked up enough money to find Stan and offer him a place in his home-- but it’s too late for that now.

 

Despite knowing he called for Stan, he’s so frightened that when he hears a knock at the door, he still panics. And even after peering through the triangle-shaped peephole and __seeing__ Stan in front of him, he’s still scared enough that he picks up his crossbow by the door, moving slow enough that Stan has time to take in all the signs plastered across his front porch reading things like “NO TRESPASSING, PROSECUTERS WILL BE SHOT” and “PRIVATE PROPERTY: KEEP OUT” and “BEWARE OF BURIED POWER LINES”

 

The door slams open before Stan even has time to react, and a razor-sharp bolt at the end of an armed crossbow is lifted and levied right in his face, close enough that he could reach out and touch it. Stanford looks… well, he looks __crazy__. He has a manic, frantic look in his eye, stubble so thick it’s almost a beard, wild hair that looks like it hasn’t been washed in a while, and wild dark circles under his eyes that illustrate on his skin how long it’s been since he had a decent night’s sleep. His clothing is rumpled, it looks like he’s been wearing the same thing for days-- and most importantly, he’s holding a fucking __bolt-action weapon__ right in Stan’s face.

 

“How do I know it’s really you?” Ford says, his voice exhausted and cracking.    

 

"Holy Moses Stanford, back off!" Stan takes a few hasty steps back, nearly slipping off the ice-covered porch, clutching tight to the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder. "What--whaddaya mean? You called for me!"

 

Well, it certainly __sounds__  like Stan. He lowers the crossbow but doesn’t completely set it down, instead holding it at rest as he leans out the door to look all around the house for any sign of other people, even just tracks in the snow.

 

“Did anyone follow you?” he asks, looking back up at Stan. “Anyone at __all__. Did the __taxi driver__  look shifty, even? Did you have __any__  weird experiences on your way here?”

 

Stan clicks his tongue against his cheek, "No, jeeze, what's with the third degree? I'm here, ain't I? Why're ya bein' so paranoid? You got the FBI watchin' ya or somethin'? Woof . . ." he takes a glance into Ford's house, "When was the last time you let some sunlight in here?"

 

Ford just grabs Stan by the collar of his jacket and hauls him inside, slamming the door behind him. Before Stan can get another word in edgewise, Ford is shining a pen light in both of his eyes, one at a time.

 

Only when he seems to be satisfied by what he sees does he release his struggling, confused brother. With lights dancing in his eyes, he finally gets a good look at his house. It’s cluttered and messy, with strings connecting newspaper clippings on almost every surface. Stacks of books bent over and held up by other objects flank loose garbage, crumpled up pieces of paper carpet the floor, and every window has been covered up by loose blankets, scraps of cloth, and even coats or other clothing so that nothing and nobody would ever have a hope of peeking inside Ford’s house. But despite all of the mess and trash, the worst part of his home is the evidence of what looks like some kind of cult symbolism all over his house, giant triangles painted with eyeballs that have all been smashed, toppled over, torn up or painted across.

 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” Ford babbles as Stan rubs his eyes. “I just had to make sure he didn’t get to you.”

 

Stanley's so taken aback by it all,  he hardly registers that Ford has said something to him, and it takes his mind a moment or two to catch up with is ears, to really process the words as more than garbled jibberish. He shakes his head, trying to clear his eyes of the spots now clouding his vision, and holding a hand to his head, Stan asks worriedly; "Him? Him who? Whaddaya talkin' about, Sixer? You're not makin' any sense."

 

“Nothing, it’s nothing,” Ford waves a hand dismissively and clutches his jacket shut as he turns away to a cluttered desk, shoving and dropping books and papers to the ground as he searches for what he’s after, and he turns back around clutching a thick leather-bound journal with a worn red cover and a faded gold handprint on the front with six fingers, labeled with the number 1. “I don’t have very much time to explain, and I can’t trust __anyone__  anymore, nobody else but you. I’m running out of time-- we all are. He’s coming, and I need your help to stop him.”

 

"Stanford, slow down." Stanley says, trying to keep his voice even, but worry is making him feel quickly agitated, and he's losing his cool already. There's something clearly wrong with his brother, this isn't the man he remembered, but to be honest, the last time he saw Ford was, well . . . they weren't men, they were boys, and his brother is thinner now, with dark circles under his eyes, looking like he hasn't eaten or slept, let alone showered, in weeks possibly.

 

"What are you talkin' about, c'mon. Slow down and tell me." Reluctantly, Stanley reaches out to try and take his hand, to guide his attention back to the present.

 

Ford visibly flinches when Stan reaches out for him, and lurches back away from him, looking panicked as if he thought his brother was about to reach out and slap him-- and Stan can’t help but wonder when the last time was that Ford was touched kindly. He’s breathing hard, his eyes flicking up from Stan’s hand to his face, and he just shakes his head.

 

“Him,” he says finally, and reaches behind him to yank down a curtain from the closest window, revealing yet another triangle patterned in the glass with a slitted eye in the center. “ _ _He__ is coming, and we don’t have much time. If we don’t act fast, he’s going to come to our world and tear it apart for his own pleasure. He’ll take over as our new god and turn the laws of the universe inside out-- and I need your help to stop him. You’re my last hope, Stanley, I can’t fight him alone anymore, I’m not--” his voice cracks and he wheezes out the last few words. “I’m not strong enough.”

 

He tries to stifle the hurt and terror he feels as he watches his brother come apart at the seams, with little more than conspiracy and psychosis fueled mania propping him up.

 

"I think . . . ya need a doctor, Sixer." Swallowing thickly, Stan searches his brother's face. "You're not makin' sense, none of that's even possible, do ya hear yourself? How long have you been out here-- when was the last time you ate or even saw another human bein'? Lemme help ya, please. We gotta get you to a doctor."

 

“I don’t need a __doctor!__ ” Ford throws his hand in the air, the other still clutching the journal to his chest. “My eye is __fine,__ it’s not even bleeding anymore… much. I don’t need a doctor, I need your __help__. You’re the only person I could hope to contact, nobody else would have even come, and you’re so far removed from this entire situation that I knew you’d be a safe bet. Or I hoped-- I had to hope, I had no choice. I’ve made some terrible mistakes these last ten years, Stanley, all in the name of scientific discovery, but I overextended my reach and I-- I have to pull it back now. I have to undo what I’ve done.”

 

"What did you do?" Stan asks, still trying to be gentle with him, but he's losing his patience. Part of him sincerely wants to knock Ford out and drag him off to the nearest emergency room to have a psych evaluation for his own good, but he puts that winner of a thought aside and tries to calm his brother. "Maybe we can fix it--what happened, Sixer? I still don't understand, you're not makin' any sense."

 

“I was tricked,” Ford says frantically. “I was tricked by a demon, he approached me as a friendly spirit but he was lying to me the whole time. For two years he convinced me he was my friend, and helped me build a portal to his dimension so we could meet in person-- but it was all a trick! He just wants to infiltrate our dimension so he can take it over as our supreme overlord and bend the world’s laws to his terrible whims!”

 

Ford’s shoulders sink when he watches Stan just grimace at him pityingly. “God damn it, Stanley! I’m not crazy! Look, I have proof! Follow me!”

 

He turns and swiftly walks down the hall towards his office, and leaves the door wide open as he crosses the room to a very messy desk. His bed is made and looks like it hasn’t been touched in ages, while a blanket and pillow have instead been draped over the couch in his room, hanging half off the floor. Ford is muttering to himself as he rifles through the desk, leaving Stan’s eyes to roam the psychotic, terrifying scribblings all over the walls, more drawings of that triangle with the eye scrawled on every surface, only to be scratched out or covered over.

 

But the worst of it is at the foot of Ford’s bed, where a stool has been set up, and a noose is hanging from the rafters, swaying gently in the frigid breeze from his less-than-airtight bedroom window.

 

"What the hell--Sixer!" Stan storms up to that stool, and climbs onto it, carefully removing his pocket knife as he sways now and again on the stool's rickety legs. He cuts the rope, severing it and hopefully Ford's ideations. "Alright, this has gone far enough! You're in no state to be doin' anything, I gotta get you outta here. Whatever proof you have is gonna have to wait--a noose Sixer? Seriously?"

 

“A-- what?” Ford turns around and looks from the noose in Stan’s hands, up to where it had been tied from the rafters, and he clutches his journal self-consciously to his chest, suddenly seeming embarrassed. “Oh-- that, I-- I meant to untie that before you-- it wasn’t-- I’m not-- it’s not like that, it’s just-- it was a last resort. In case the demon took over my mind, and I could wrestle control from him long enough to-- nevermind, look, it’s all right here.”

 

He turns a hastily hand-bound book around to Stan and starts flipping through it. There are photographs of shadows that are vaguely triangle shaped in between newspaper clippings going back decades, a photo of some wacky cave painting of that same triangle, and more.

 

“He goes by Bill, but it’s not his real name-- not his first name,” Ford says, his hands shaking. “He wants to come to our world and burn it to the ground like he destroyed his own home dimension. This is __real__ , Stanley, you have to believe me. You have to believe me.”

 

"Okay." Stanley replies, his voice shaking with emotion. "Okay, I believe you. I believe you."

 

He doesn't, not in a million years, but he can see his brother is struggling with this, and maybe if he plays along with the fantasy, even for a little bit, he can get his brother to see reason eventually--there must be some kind of loophole or something in his story that Stan can take apart.

 

The comfort that washes over Ford when Stan says he believes him is both visible and physical. He sets down the book, so addled that it doesn’t even occur to him that Stan could be lying. He reaches out to grab his arms, his hands squeezing around his brother’s biceps through his jacket, and his head droops as he starts to shake.

 

“I’m so… so relieved to hear you say that, Stanley,” he murmurs, his voice hoarse. “You’re the only person in the world that I can trust anymore. I know we’ve had our differences, and I’m not… the man or the brother you ever wanted me to be, but I’m-- I’m so happy you came. I was so scared you wouldn’t come.”

 

"It's okay . . . I'm here now. I'm not goin' anywhere." He replies, holding Ford by the shoulders. He lets his hand trail up his brother's neck, to the side of his face, and he really looks at him. It's been so long since they've seen each other--Stan's already got gray hairs, and due to hard living, they both have more lines on their faces than when last they'd seen each other, more lines than they should have at their age.

 

Stepping in close, Stan cups Ford's face and leans in, his breath soft as he presses a gentle kiss to his brother's lips, hoping somehow it'll revive him, and snap him out of this insane plot.

 

The kiss seems to open some kind of floodgate in Ford’s mind, while it closes another. A sense of clarity washes over him, his priorities suddenly shifting as his hands claw up from Stan’s arms to wrap around his neck, and he sags against him. He’s missed Stan so terribly, for the last ten years it’s felt like part of his very soul has been missing.

 

“I’ve been so scared, Stanley, I’m scared all the time,” he sobs, holding onto him so tightly it’s a struggle just to draw breath. “I can’t eat, I never sleep-- I’m so scared.”

 

Stan supports him as he sobs, letting him lean against him and he's startled by how light Stanford feels in his arms--he's wasted away, practically nothing but skin and bones, all over some . . . triangular monstrosity that may or may not be real. The photographs are difficult to fake, but not impossible. Stan's conned a good many people out of their money fabricating things before, but his brother's either drinking his own kool aid, or something deeper is going on.

 

"It's okay, Stanford. I'm here now. What can I do?"

 

Instead of answering him, Ford just leans back to kiss him again. His face is wet, and his lips are chapped, but neither deter him as he eats at Stan’s mouth. Ten years apart from him followed by a brief kiss feels like breathing air again for the first time after slowly, slowly suffocating to death, and he wants to breathe again.

 

He knows he’ll have to take Stan down to the basement soon, but that feels like a distant possibility as Stan’s arms close around his waist tightly to hold him against his body. Where Ford’s grown thin, Stan has put on weight, he feels huge and solid and capable, pressed up to his brother from knees to nose. Ford leans into him, embraces him with his arms and his heart and his tears, desperate to make up for lost time-- time they still don’t have.

 

The gulf between them is closed for just a moment, but Stan's aware they don't have time, not like they used to. Once, they daydreamed of endless summers aboard the Stan O' War, but that dream is long since gone, lost to their broken youth and the hardships of the present, but Stan tries to hold onto just this moment, even if it won't pan out.

 

He kisses Ford deeply, and with purpose. Holding tight to him, he cries as well, face going wet and hot with tears. The thought of letting go of him rends his heart into pieces, bringing up soft, quiet sobs as they share their first kiss in ten years.

 

It ends when the desperate need to breathe is halted by noses clogged with tears, and Ford pants into Stan’s shoulder as his brother supports his full weight. It feels for a moment like no time at all has passed, that they’re still young boys again getting ready to live their lives together.

 

Maybe it’s not too late to get started on that now. They still have time.

 

“I have to show you the basement,” Ford whispers hoarsely, sniffling wetly. “Once you see, you’ll understand.”

 

He leads Stan by the hand, hope climbing cautiously up his throat to live in the cottony, confused haze of his brain, expanding out to fill in all the cracks. They still have time. They have so much time.


	5. Weirdmageddon

Time has been a funny concept to Ford for quite a while now. In his travels through the multiverse, he’s stumbled onto familiar timelines at different stages, thrust into different years and different versions of his own universe, variations of what could have been and what never was. He’s spent so long hopping between time and space so many times, that coming back to his own dimension was jarring to find that thirty years had passed in real time to the thirty years he’d been absent, when in other cases he’d traveled for six years only to find himself in a version of the world where Stanley was in his eighties, and in another he’d traveled for fifteen years only to stumble across a six-year old Stan.

 

But it seems that there’s always a part of you tethered to the dimension you come from, because thirty years had passed in exact fashion to the thirty years Ford lived chronologically, years lost to time and scattered across the universe.

 

Stanley had become an old man, just like him. Some part of him had always hoped that if he ever managed to find his way back to his home universe, it would be only a short time after he left, and that even if he was an old man, Stan would still be young and have his whole life ahead of him. Of course, neither of them could ever be so lucky.

 

When Stanley had told Ford in that portal room that he didn’t believe a word that Ford had been saying the entire time, he’d felt so lied to and betrayed that he didn’t think twice about attacking his brother just to stop him from destroying everything he’d worked so hard on, despite the fact that it directly contradicted the part of him that wanted to put everything he’d spent the last ten years doing behind him. He hadn’t been stable, and one part of him outweighed the other in an instant, and ruined his life. It ruined both their lives.

 

But it seems at least that Stanley had it good-- as good as he possibly could have. He transformed Ford’s house into a miserably kitschy tourist trap, and he’d been alone for thirty years, but he got to be there when their older half-brother Sherman became a grandfather, and they became great-uncles-- Stanley immediately, and Ford 12 years late.

 

Those kids are his world now, just like they’re Stan’s, and right now they’re running away from a demon that Stan and Ford worked together in terrible harmony to bring to this world, after so many decades spent trying to prevent exactly this.

 

“We have to __do__ something, Stanley,” Ford grips the bars of the cage, his vitriol for his brother botching the zodiac far behind him. “If we don’t do something, Bill’s doing to destroy those kids. He won’t hesitate, he has no sense of morality or mercy-- he’ll kill them in an instant to get to us. To get to __me__.”

 

Stan glances up from where he's standing, all of the viciousness gone from his voice now. How could he have been so stupid, putting not only the fate of his niece and nephew, but the entire world in jeopardy just to wring a thank you from his brother? He’d even __gotten__ that thank you, even if it hadn’t been sincere-- and it __still__ wasn’t enough for him.

 

From their pyramid prison, he can hear Bill's distane roars through the portal he'd opened up into whatever hellish pocket dimension he's chasing the kids through, and he shakes his head, "This is my fault . . . I can't believe I--I'm so stupid." Swallowing thickly, he rises from the floor of their prison and grips the bars, "There's gotta be another way."

 

Ford shakes his head. “Our only hope is for me to fight him off after I let him in, but… I don’t like those odds. If I can trap him in part of my mind I might be able to overpower him, but it’s a long shot. I might have been able to get away with that when I was young and he was weak, but now that he’s in our dimension he’s stronger than ever before.”

 

"What if we trapped him in my mind?" Stan sounds as unsure as he feels. "There's nothin' in there, nothin' of use anyways . . . might buy us some time, ya know? We could switch clothes, it's not like he can tell humans apart, we all look like ants to him anyways."

 

Ford looks on at his brother in abject horror. “Stanley… no, we can’t-- I couldn’t. Don’t ask me to do that. You __are__  useful, you can’t just throw yourself away like that. I won’t let you. Dipper and Mabel would be destroyed, __I__  would be--”

 

He sighs, dropping back down to the floor, putting his back to the bars. “Logically I know there’s no other way, nothing foolproof. At best I could corner him and give you long enough to shoot me to death and hopefully it would bring the bastard down with me, but that’s as foolish as it is reckless. But for once, even though I know the math, even though I know what the logical best solution is, I just… can’t bring myself to do it.”

 

"Then let me do it." His brother pleads, voice tight and choked with unshed tears. "Look, you . . . gave up on your dreams because of me, Stanford. Ya lost your chance at your college because of me, and ya went down this rabbit hole with Bill because of me. If it weren't for my recklessness, ya mighta gone on to do god knows what--ya mighta been the next Steve Jobs for all we know, but I wasted your potential. Let me do this Stanford. It makes the most sense, you know it does."

 

Ford’s jaw trembles. “That’s exactly what I mean. I __know__  you should do it, I know it’s the only way, but… some horrible, selfish, exhausted part of me would rather let the entire world burn than lose you a third time.”

 

Stan looks down at him with a trembling smile and nods, "I know. Worked thirty years to get ya back, but . . . if losin' my mind or dyin' is what it takes for you and those kids to live on, I'll do it in a heartbeat, Sixer." Those unshed tears finally fall, and Stanley glances away. "I'm sorry, for whatever it's worth now. I'm sorry I was . . . I'm sorry wasn't a good brother."

 

Ford tugs Stan down to sit with him, shoulder-to-shoulder, and he sniffs miserably. “You were never the problem,” he mutters, wringing the material of his long coat. “We were raised up all wrong. I’m just sorry it took me so long to understand that.”

 

He shakes his head, steeling his expression. “I can’t let you do this, Stanley. This hasn’t been my world for three decades, I don’t know the first thing about how to be a person in this day and age. I missed so much innovation, so much progress, I wouldn’t even have the first idea where to begin. I __had__  my adventure, thirty years of it, while you were stuck in one place trying to bring me back here. It’s your turn to travel, to see the world, to find your own adventure. This can be the end of my road-- I’ve done enough. I’m so tired.”

 

"And what? I don't get a say?" Stan's tone is edged with dark humor. "Like you said, I spent all that time tryin' to get ya back, don't I have a say in what ya do with the time ya have left? I'm an old man, Sixer-- older than you in a lot of ways, even though we're the same age--I can't just let ya throw away what you have left of your life . . . let me __do__ this."

 

“I can’t,” Ford’s voice is small, trapped in the back of his throat, and he covers his face with both hands. He feels like he’s 27 again, terrified and waiting for Stan to rescue him from Bill. He feels like he’s 10 years old again, petrified of his feelings and always looking to Stan to justify them with a kind word. He feels so small and vulnerable and weak, just like he used to be so long ago, back when he would always let Stan fight all his battles for him. “I’d rather die than lose you again.”

 

"This is just how it worked out, Sixer--I dunno. It's fate or somethin'. Never believed in that stuff, but what're the odds, huh? It's meant to be me, it was always meant to be me. I don't think we've got a choice here--you got so much potential in that brain of yours." Stan slips his arm around his brother's shoulders and tugs him close. "I'm just here, livin' on borrowed time. If ya ask me, I shoulda died a long time ago, maybe this is why I'm still here. To save you and the kids."

 

Ford turns to lean into his brother, flinching as another horrible roar rips through the fearamid, and he wraps his arms around his waist. “We were supposed to have time,” he mutters into his shoulder, shaking all over with the effort to keep from completely breaking down into tears. “We were supposed to have our whole lives. This isn’t __fair__.”

 

"Nothin' ever is, but at least--" Stan cuts off as tears cause his voice to shake, and he takes a steeling breath. "At least I got to see ya one last time."

 

“Don’t say it, please don’t say it,” Ford whispers, leaning back to cup Stan’s face in both hands. Just looking at his face now hurts, knowing it’s the last time he’ll ever be able to look at Stan and know it’s Stan looking back at him. This won’t kill Stanley… but it’ll be so horrible that it might as well kill him.

 

He doesn’t want to think about living in a world without Stanley. It would be horrible if he died, but somehow worse if Stan was still around physically, but checked out mentally. Stanley deserved more dignity than that, after everything. Tears brim in his eyes and run down his cheeks as he rubs his thumbs under Stan’s eyes and fights just to keep it together.

 

“When this is all over,” he whispers, tears leaking into his mouth between his words as his vision warps and blurs. “I’m taking you out on a boat with me, just the two of us. I know it isn’t what we always dreamed of, but… I think it’s the best we’ll ever get.”

 

"Okay, Sixer. Okay." Stan cups his face too, and leans in, uncertainty causing him to hesitate for a moment. Then, closing his eyes he bridges the gap between them and presses a slow, ardent kiss to his brother's lips. The pain of knowing that these final moments are the last they'll ever have together, knowing each other so deeply, rends his heart nearly in two and he gasps against Ford's lips, tears streaming down his cheeks.

 

"I love you Stanford. I never stopped lovin' you."

 

Ford can barely kiss back through the tears, he’s so taken apart with grief. This isn’t how any of it was supposed to end for them. They were supposed to ride off on that stupid boat together and be nobodies for the rest of their lives. They weren’t supposed to be heroes or villains of anybody else’s stories, they were just supposed to be __happy__ , and he had to ruin it all by wanting to go to school.

 

There were so many chances for them to turn it around over the years, and so many wasted opportunities to get back together and chase down that sunset. They always thought there would be more __time__. There was always supposed to be more time.

 

The weight of this kiss burns the back of his throat with all the lost time they’ll never get back, and knowing it’s the last one they’ll ever share makes him shake with fear. He doesn’t know how to exist in a world without Stanley, even though he spent the better part of the last forty years without him, there was a part of him that always knew he was still out there. He knew if Stanley ever died that no matter where he was he would feel it, and it gave him comfort to know that no matter how far apart they were, somewhere Stan was still living his life.

 

But this is how it ends. This is it for him, and it’s all because Ford installed that stupid metal plate in his head. He remembers now, what Jheselbraum said to him, that beautiful oracle that swayed the fight in his favor so many years ago. She’d told him, “You have the face of the man who will defeat Bill,” and he’d always thought that was such a peculiar way for her to phrase it, but it all makes sense now. His twin brother shares his face-- it was never supposed to be him. It was never going to be him.

 

If humans can die of broken hearts, he’s fairly sure he isn’t going to last much longer after this is all over.


	6. Proposal

After all their hardships, it's finally happening. After Weirdmageddon and a year of regaining his memory, all their work and preparation, at last they're preparing to set sail together. It's long deserved, to be sure, and when they'd pulled up to the dock bright and early with the ship docked on the shimmering water, Stan had felt his heart swell with anticipation, but it wasn't just the trip that's got him out of sorts.

 

The whole hour spent unloading onto the ship, Stan had paused to catch his breath and just __be__ for a bit, hoping Ford didn't catch sight of him sticking his hand in his pocket to feel over something buried in there-- something of such import that Stan's been unable to even think about anything else for weeks. Really, he'd planned to do it much later, but he's never been patient, nor good at waiting, so today's the day.

 

After loading the last of their supplies onto the Stan O' War 2, Stanford is busy with the sails, and his brother knows it's now or never; so while Ford is looking toward the risen sun, climbing high over the fluffy, oceanic clouds he takes a knee and a deep breath.

 

"Stanford, I've been preparin' my whole life to go on this adventure with ya--never thought I'd see ya again, let alone be settin' sail on our own ship after all these years; but now I'm askin' ya if you'll go on __this__ adventure with me." From his pocket, Stan produces a polished, wooden jewelry box, and inside is a gold band inlaid with tasteful, diamond studs.

 

Without turning around, Ford just chuckles to himself. “Stanley, don’t be ridiculous,” he says, tugging on the rope to draw the sail in tight after he’d checked it for the third time in an hour just to make sure the pulley system is well-oiled and will hold properly. “We’re already going on our adventure, you don’t have to convince me.”

 

“Stanford…”

 

“Besides, at this point I’m pretty sure __I’m__  the one dragging __you__ along,” Ford continues playfully, his back still to Stan, kneeling awkwardly on deck behind him as he ties a complicated knot to make sure the sail will stay in place. “Truly we should probably be waiting a little bit longer to make sure all of your memories have returned and are sticking for certain this time, but there’s no time like the present, and I __promised__  you I’d take you out on a boat after everything was said and done--”

 

"Stanford, for the love a'God, would ya just turn around?!"

 

Ford flinches at the sound of frustration in his brother’s voice, and turns around expecting the worst-- only for his heart to slam up into his mouth when he sees his brother kneeling in front of him holding a ringbox.

 

“Stanley, what are you…?” his shoulders sag mid-sentence as realization hits him. The ring, the pose, the cheesy lines… his chest clenches with emotion as color rises to his face, and he very nearly sits down in the open air. “Stanley! You can’t just-- what are you-- what if someone sees?”

 

Nobody will see, of course. They’re half a mile out from civilization on the main drag of the docks, hours away from Gravity Falls all the way on the coast of Oregon so nobody would recognize them anyway, and even if someone __did__  see, at this point nobody would be able to guess they’re brothers, age has made them look so different from one another. But still, it’s the __principle__ of the thing.

 

"Listen, Sixer . . . I've waited a long time to be with you again. We've both been through hell and back, and who knows what's lyin' in wait for us on the open seas, I'm askin' ya, not as your brother, but as your soulmate if you'll . . ." Stanley's voice goes unsteady with unshed tears, "If you'll face whatever comes together, by my side--so long as we both shall live."

 

Ford’s hand flies up to cover his mouth as he stares down at the ring in the box, and then up at his brother’s face. This is real. This is __real__.

 

“We-- we can’t get __married__ , nobody would marry us, we’re-- we __are__ brothers, we can’t-- we can’t legally--” he babbles, his breathing picking up in pace. Why is he trying to apply logic to this, when he can feel his heart lifting up and soaring through the clouds? Why does he have to ruin everything?”

 

"I'm not askin' ya to make it legal, ya dummy. I know we can't get married like a normal couple, of course we're brothers, that's not--that isn't--!" Stanley takes a deep breath. "C'mon already, my knees are killin' me."

 

Practically hyperventilating, Ford drops to his knees in front of Stan and tentatively reaches for the box to look more closely at the ring. It’s understated, sensible… exactly the kind of ring Ford would want. Stan knew exactly what he was doing by picking this one.

 

“Stanley,” he breathes out shakily, looking up from the ring to his brother’s face. “You want to __marry__  me?”

 

"Of course I wanna marry you. For bein' the smartest guy I know, sometimes you're an idiot." Stan laughs through tears, his shoulders shaking with mirth. "I've been waitin' for this moment all my life--I want us to spend the rest of our lives together, and I want you to know that I'm committed to you, Stanford. Better or worse, rich or poor--all that shit. I want you."

 

Ford just stares down at the ring in the box for a few moments, his breath coming in shaky bursts, and then he looks back up at Stan with dawning horror. “I don’t have a ring for you.”

 

“Might have that covered already,” Stan admits, taking out a second box and passing it over. There’s a matching ring inside, a similar plain gold band, but with only one tiny diamond in it instead of the six that form a ring around Ford’s.

 

Ford stands up to his feet and looks at both of the boxes before he passes the one containing his ring back over to Stan. “Right here,” he says. “Let’s do it right here and now. I don’t want to waste another second.”

 

"Gotta be honest with ya," Stan wipes at his eyes under his glasses, "I don't have any vows prepared--I know it's kinda dumb, but this was a spur of the moment thing."

 

“I’ll let you in on a secret-- I don’t have anything prepared either,” Ford says, his tone giddy and trembling with laughter and terror.

 

Stan looks out over the water for a long while before he speaks again, "Will you Stanford, take me--Stanley Pines--to be your unlawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, til death do us part?"

 

“God, yes,” Ford clasps his hands together behind Stan’s neck. “Yes, a thousand times yes, forever. And what about me? Will you agree to be with me through riches and poverty, through sickness and health?”

 

Stanley smiles softly, "Sweetheart, I wouldn't dream of bein' any place else." His eyes flicker from Ford's face, to his lips, and back up, anticipating the moment they seal the deal. "Just promise me one thing, alright? Don't ever leave me alone again."

 

“Never,” Ford promises. “Never, never again.”

 

He rests his forehead against Stanley’s, and laughs through the tears that spill from his cheeks. “I’ve wanted to spend my whole life with you from the moment we were born. My earliest memory is rolling over and knocking my face against the floor, and watching you valiantly wiggle over to touch my arm to stop me from crying. Even before we were old enough to understand up from down or basic object permanence you were there protecting me.”

 

Laughing wetly, he winds his arms around Stan’s neck. “Even when we were apart, you were still with me. You were always with me. I carried you in every foot step, preserved you in every memory. I heard your voice in the dark and it kept me alive whenever I wanted to give up. You’ve never left my side once, not in fifty-eight years, not once. And if you don’t give me another fifty-eight more, I’ll personally follow you to hell and drag you back up by your boot straps until I’ve had my fill of you, Stanley Pines.”

 

His brother just laughs to fill the tense air, tears dripping down his nose, coloring his cheeks and ears cherry red, and he surges forward to pick Ford up, bodily and swing him around in a half circle before closing the gap between them whispering "You may now kiss the groom." then he crushes his lips to Ford's and kisses him while they both laugh through gasping breaths, their arms searching to wrap around each other.

 

Thirty years he spent in the dark, never losing hope that someday he'd have his brother back, and now that he's here, Stanley will never leave his side again. Come hell or high water, he'll be there, loyal as a dog, dedicated always to Ford's safety and happiness. The love he feels for Stanford could burn him up from the inside out and he'd still be the happiest man on earth.

 

Ford never expected that after everything, it would culminate in a happy ending-- but privately, he thinks they deserve no less. As it turns out, none of their time was wasted after all, if it was all building to this. Everything had to happen exactly the way it did in order for this exact event to come to pass-- and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

When the ship takes off from port, Ford looks across the deck at his brother, his beloved, his soulmate, his **_**_husband_**_**  and gives him a thousand-watt smile that puts the very sun in the sky to shame. And when the sails inflate with the wind and take them farther and farther away from shore, Ford can’t help but feel like they’re embarking on the __second__  greatest adventure of their life.


End file.
